Unspoken Affection
by mo.texas55
Summary: Leonardo discovers that he and Donatello have much more in common than he realized and finds himself lately spending a lot of time with his brainy younger brother. In the meantime, SOMEONE notices this growing bond and begins, however reluctantly, to feel the sting of jealousy...Post "Vengeance is Mine"
1. Chapter 1

**Take this story whichever way you will. I myself am not entirely sure at this point where it's going to end up. But there's something unignorably adorable about Leo and Donnie as a pair, and then something just as irresistible about Leo and Raph. And whatever those somethings are gave rise to this piece. So I hope you enjoy, and we'll see where this takes us.**

**And of course, disclaimer: As much as I wish the turtles were mine, they simply are not. **

* * *

The slosh of eight-year-old, mutant turtle feet traipsing through ice cold sewer water echoed through New York City's underground network of mucky tunnels. The careless splashes were accompanied by the whispered exhales of two sets of miniaturized lungs hiding behind the turtles' plastrons as they hurried down a narrow passageway, one following the other.

The brother in front bore an adventurous grin that swelled with the same air of overconfidence that always so often stained his cheeks. His emerald eyes, accented by a strip of red cloth, danced around the slippery, slime-coated tunnel enthusiastically as the young ones came closer and closer upon their destination. In his arms was a paper bag on its last leg of life, bulging with articles of clothing just as equally old and shabby. The young turtle hardly spared a glance behind his shoulder toward his brother, who was lagging slightly behind.

The second turtle was striped with blue and skimmed the tunnel with a nervous gaze markedly the same hue of his mask. He kept his arms wrapped around himself as a frail defense against the cold and only ran whenever he realized his brother was trotting too far ahead to make out in the shadows. His little heart beat a fast pace behind his ribcage and his head whirled at every noise, constantly gazing back at the sheet of black that seemed to follow them, crawling over every inch of the tunnel in a deadly, pending silence. It was not the darkness that he feared, nor the mysteries that lurked within it. What frightened him was the prospect of being found in a place they should not be.

"Raphie," he moaned as he caught up with his brother again. "We're not supposed to be down here. What if Master Splinter—"

"Quit being such a baby Leo," Raphael hissed, sparing his brother half a glance over his shoulder. "I thought you said you wanted to see it."

"I do but…" Leonardo bounced on his toes anxiously. "Sensei told us never to come this far. He's gonna find out. We'll get into trouble…Maybe we should go back."

"No way!" Raph exclaimed. "Not when we're this—" He stopped abruptly and looked toward the ceiling. "You hear that?"

Leo inched close to his brother's shell and listened as panic pulsed through his veins. He tried to hear it, the whisper of his father's tail dragging through the water, the wispy silence of the great master's sprint, that voice angrily shouting out his name. But instead he heard a high-pitched wailing that began faint at first, then grew louder as the seconds ticked by. He furrowed his brow at the noise.

"We're close," Raph nearly shouted, rattling Leo's nerves. He took off without another word and shortly disappeared around a corner.

"Raph, wait!"

Leonardo hastily followed and came to a sudden halt as he rounded the corner and nearly plowed into his brother's carapace. He wobbled on the balls of his feet for a second then found his balance and gasped as he caught a glimpse of dappled, white-blue light beaming down into the middle of the tunnel a few yards away. He stood on his tiptoes to get a better peek over Raph's shoulder.

He was familiar with this kind of light, but it always seemed so far away in the dojo, and it was never content on staying. It continually came and went as though undecided whether or not it wanted to befriend the little family of turtles and their rat master. And even when it did shine, the leaves of the full-grown tree made the light and the world it came from hard to distinguish, and Splinter always covered it up in the winter. It was a wonder they could never get close to. But now, that wonder was only yards away, right above their heads.

Raphael finally turned to his blue-banded brother with a giant smile splitting his face. "This is it," he said, his voice brimming with eagerness. He shoved the bag into Leo's arms. "Hold this."

Leonardo, who was not quite as strong as his younger brother, clutched the bag awkwardly and waited as Raphael plunged his arms inside of it, adding to its weight. The turtle in red pulled out a dingy, striped scarf and wrapped it cozily around his brother's neck, then stuffed a knitted cap on his head that sunk down halfway over his eyes. Leonardo audibly struggled as he shifted the bag into one arm to adjust the hat on his head as Raphael continued to scrounge around in the bag. Finally, Raph pulled out a large, stained hoodie and slipped it over his own head.

Leonardo narrowed his eyes. "Where did you get that?" He certainly never remembered Splinter bringing it home for one of them.

"I found it."

"Where?"

Raphael answered with an un-telling smirk and took the bag from Leo's arms. He pulled out a blanket and tossed it at him. "You ready?"

Leonardo fumbled with the blanket and wrapped it around himself, clutching the ends tightly at his chest. However much it stung his nose with the stench of filth, it was much warmer than nothing. He nodded and followed as Raph led the way toward the light.

The air sharpened with an intensifying chill the closer they got, and with the new lighting, Leo could now see his breath leaving his lips in little white clouds. A slight smile escaped him without his notice—it wasn't often that he got to see himself breathing, witness the proof of his life floating before his own beak. But just as quickly as it had come, the little grin slipped away again, replaced by astonishment as he briefly hesitated at the edge of the light. He could see now, little specks of white drifting down from the grate above, crafting a little dusting of frost on the sewer floor wherever the light touched the cold cement. Slowly, Leonardo stepped directly under it, sliding one foot forward at a time, and looked straight up.

What he saw made his breath escape once and filled him with awe from the bottom up. A tingling ensued in his chest with a new level of happiness he had never known until this moment…It was the sky—and it was full of wispy clouds that released a constant trickle of the white flakes he only vaguely knew to be snow. And behind these clouds were slivers of midnight blue, all illuminated by a shiny, silver moon as round as a coin, just hanging there, far above the world. And yet he still felt like he could reach it somehow, if he just lifted his hand and wished hard enough. There were no stars—years later Donatello would explain this to be the cause of light pollution—but little dots of man-made light, embedded in skyscraping buildings, did join the moon in igniting the city with a gleam of luminescent silver as they set up a perimeter around the grate.

After years of wondering, of frustrating himself with curiosity, of hoping as hard as he could just to catch a glimpse of the world that his sensei constantly forbade him and his brothers from visiting, he was finally seeing it for the very first time—if through the bars of a metal screen, it was still his first view of the sky, of the tops of buildings, of the real actual moon, and of snow. He reached up and could swear he felt the light curling graciously around his fingers, welcoming him, pulling at him as if calling him to draw nearer, to join life on the surface…and the snow, it was so soft, so cold, tickling his skin as the tiny snowflakes met his fingertips and melted straight away.

The smile came back, creeping across his cheeks. "Raph," he whispered. "The sky…"

Raphael nodded. "I know…Still wanna go back?" he teased, another smirk in his voice.

Leo shook his head distantly. "It's beautiful," he said instead, the soft-spoken words leaving his lips in a wispy puff of white. Without realizing he was doing so, he stood on his toes, reaching as far up as he could, desperate to get his fingers between the grate to actually touch the atmosphere on the other side.

He swayed as something grabbed his shell and then his feet left the floor. Raphael stooped to get his brother on his shoulders and then stood without effort. Using the top of Raph's head for support, Leo expertly propped his feet on his younger brother's shoulders and pushed himself up to his full height. Together, their stature put Leonardo's head just inches below the grate.

Breathing rather shallow now, he slowly lifted his arm out of the blanket and poked his child-sized, three-fingered hand through the widest slot in the grid. The atmosphere was neither colder nor warmer, nor was it any more or any less humid. The pattern of the snowfall was no different and the lighting was the same, but having his hand enveloped by the air up above, the same air that the humans breathed, gave him other-worldly chills that rushed up his spine.

"How does it feel?" Raph asked, his voice echoing off the tunnel walls.

"Amazing."

"Leo…We could go up there."

It took a few blinks for this to sink in and yank him rudely out of his reverie.

"What?"

"There's a manhole just in the next tunnel; it's got a ladder leading up to it and everything."

"Are you insane?" the older turtle exclaimed, jerking his hand back and staring down at his brother with wide eyes. "Splinter would kill us! He'd never forgive us. He'd—He would…Wait. How do you know that?"

Raphael's bright and mischievous green eyes blinked up at him silently and then he shrugged, hands secure around Leo's ankles. "I've been over here a few times; I told you. But come on Leo…We could actually go up there to the surface—for the first time _ever_. There's probably snow everywhere!"

"There's probably_ people_ everywhere."

No sooner had these words taken their respective dive off his tongue than his eyes snapped back up at the sound of voices and he caught a glimpse of two large, darkened, oddly-shaped figures moving toward the grate. Panic quickly seized him and in his hurry to hide he forgot he was standing on Raphael's shoulders. He tipped backward, and in Raph's instinctive attempt to catch him, they both fell with an _oomph!_, Leo's shell connecting with Raph's plastron as he landed on top of him. They stilled in an awkward heap and held their breath as they stared anxiously up at the grate, eight-year-old hearts shivering behind their ribcages as they waited to be discovered.

Instead, however, the figures passed right over the grid and their voices soon faded away. Both boys exhaled with relief.

"You see?" Leo said, rolling off of his brother. "We can't go up there. Someone would see us."

Raph's huff of an exhale left his mouth as a cloud. He crossed his arms over his chest and slanted his lips. "You do _everything_ Splinter tells you to. You're such a wannabe."

Leo pursed his lips, ready to argue, but decided against it. They'd probably be heard if they started shouting at each other, being so close to the world above. He plopped down next to his brother and sighed.

"Let's just stay here for a little while and then go back home before Master Splinter knows we're gone. Wasn't that what we were supposed to do anyway?"

Raphael turned his green eyes on his brother and stared him down as though it took every ounce of humility he had in him—if any—to agree with his brother's recommendation. Then something soft seemed to come across his gaze and he gave in. "Fine, you win." He threw his hands down in his lap and then gave his fingers the smallest of smirks. "Splinter Jr.," he mumbled.

Leo squinted at his younger brother and accepted the challenge with his own ginger grin. "Hot-head."

"Teacher's pet."

"Gremlin."

"Kill joy."

"Godzilla."

"Suck-up."

Leo paused with a self-confident smirk. "_Little _brother."

Raphael narrowed his eyes. The boys held evenly-matched glares for such a long amount of time that Leo started to stretch his senses and count the number of snowflakes faintly kissing the sewer floor as he waited for Raph to break. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen…And then finally the stubborn turtle stuffed his arms over his chest and scoffed under his breath.

"Yeah, well I'm stronger than you."

Leonardo smiled. "I know…But I still win."

A tiny smirk lifted Raph's cheek. "Oh yeah?"

The familiar fire of a physical challenge lit in Raph's eyes, and Leo knew what was coming but was too slow to move first. Raphael pounced on him before he could spare another blink, tackling him to the sewer floor, and they wrestled with each other—ninjas-in-training style—until Raphael pinned Leonardo to the floor and they were both giggling so hard that exultant tears sparkled in their eyes.

"Okay, okay," Leo laughed. "I give. Get off."

He shoved his brother to the side and Raph rolled over on his shell, giggling softly still as he stared up at the grate above. His laughter soon tapered off and Leo watched him close his eyes, a ginger smile on his lips, and let the snow fall on his face. Leo leaned back and rested his head on his brother's plastron and did the same. The snow was nice and cold on his skin, keeping him awake and alert and aware that anytime he opened his eyes he'd be struck with the presence of the sky and the radiant moon smiling down on him. He sighed comfortably and hugged the blanket tighter around him.

There was a moment of silence as he listened contentedly to the low rumble of human life moving around on the surface and the steady breathing of his brother as his stomach rose and fell under Leo's head. Then Raph took in a large breath and sighed.

"Hey Leo?"

"Hm?"

"Don't tell anyone about this okay?"

Leonardo opened his eyes. The sight of the speckled sky was still just as brilliant as before. "But…Mikey and Donnie—."

"I know," Raph said quietly. "But they can see it some other time right? I mean, Splinter can't keep us down here forever."

Leo pursed his lips doubtfully. Their father was very protective, and very frighteningly grave about the matter of them never going up to the surface. "I dunno Raphie…He kind of can."

Raph shifted, stuffing his hands behind his head. "Well he can't keep _me_."

Leo glanced at the defiance stuck on his brother's set expression and frowned. He looked back up at the sky. The beauty of it seemed unfair to hold so selfishly to themselves. He'd feel guilty for not letting the younger two in on an experience like this.

"Why can't we tell Mikey and Donnie?"

"Because we need a thing Leo, just for us, _without_ Mike and Don for once."

Leo tilted his head. Admittedly, there was a small part of him that liked that idea—a secret kept just between him and Raph. It was almost annoyingly frequent, how often they butted heads, but when they did get along they could be the best of friends, almost inseparable. It seemed like a good idea, to have something they could share that would bring them closer together, maybe help them clash a little less. And it was good to be with Raph alone because Leo could handle his aggressiveness and he didn't have to worry about constantly protecting the younger two from his volatile brother's bullying streak. Maybe Raph was right.

"Don't tell the others Leo," the younger turtle said in a tone that hinted his reluctance to beg.

Leo flashed a small smile at his brother. "I won't."

Raph held up a fist. "Promise?"

Leo touched his knuckles to his brother's. "I promise."


	2. Chapter 2

Almost eight years later, Donatello and Michelangelo still ambled through life oblivious to Raph and Leo's "secret." At this point though there wasn't much to reserve from the younger two anymore, now that they all knew what obscurities the surface held and could explore this other world virtually anytime they wanted—so long as Splinter allowed it. Though, even if he didn't allow it it hardly made a difference. The four brothers always managed to find a way to elude their sensei and slip out of the lair anyway—though this did often meet undesirable consequences.

But no matter how many times they visited that world beyond the sewers, Raphael still secretly appreciated those moments he occasionally had alone with Leo, lying under their favorite grate, staring up at the sky as though it still held an unreachable mystery to them.

Over the years, the two older brothers had grown less and less compatible with one another, especially after Leonardo had become the pronounced "leader" of the team.

When they were younger, Raphael had usually been the one to nudge his brothers out of the way and put himself at the head of whatever expeditions or misadventures they got themselves into, especially when it was just him and Leo. Though, admittedly, whenever things turned sour he often took a step back and let Leonardo fumble over his own words trying to explain to Splinter why his favorite Japanese vase was shattered, why Donatello was stuck in a heap of debris two tunnels away, or why Michelangelo could not walk on both feet.

Raph had obtained a prideful attitude about being the most skillful fighter of his brothers and therefore found leadership to be his own right—even if he turned the other way when it came to taking responsibility for the plethora of "accidents" he and his brothers were constantly involved in. But since Leo had officially taken the role of the leader from him, the hot-headed turtle could often feel that pride squirming in acids of injustice in the pit of his stomach. He frequently allowed himself to feel bitter about it, especially when they were around the younger two. But when it was just him and Leo, hiding out in the very tunnel that they had deemed a sanctuary when they were eight, he could put their differences behind him for a little while—mostly because those moments seemed ever more important now, especially since they didn't come around as often anymore.

And so there they were, Leonardo leaning back against Raphael's plastron while Raph curled his arms behind his head, just as when they were kids. Although now they stared up at a cloudless, blue sky, allowing the warmth of New York's summer to wash over their reptilian skin. It had been nearly a year now since their first visit to the surface. Even to them it was amazing how much their world and their precarious existence in it had changed since then. But this…this would never change, Raph thought inwardly.

"It's kind of weird, knowing what's up there now," Leo said, squinting at the light shining in his face.

Raph shrugged. "Least now you don't have to feel guilty about not telling Donnie and Mikey."

"I guess…Do you realize we haven't come down here since that first night?"

"I might've noticed," Raph said nonchalantly, though he could hear the tone of his brother's voice beginning to slope.

"So much has happened since then…" Leo sighed and became quiet.

Raphael knew that sigh. He'd grown accustomed to hearing it at least ten times a day for the past three weeks.

"What is it, Leo?" he asked robotically, even though he was aware of the response he'd get.

The older turtle shook his head, as though he could deny it. "Nothing, it's just…I thought we might've found her by now, or at least a clue. I just…" He sighed again and did not continue.

"We will find her, bro," Raph said at an attempt at comfort. Truthfully, he just wished Leo would forget about Karai. "It's just gonna take time. Besides, Donnie says the retro-mutagen isn't ready yet. What's the point in finding her now if we can't change her back?"

A third sigh escaped the older turtle's chest and he closed his eyes. "I guess you're right," he said, though he didn't sound any more encouraged.

Raph pursed his lips in mild frustration. He didn't understand his brother's fascination with Karai. Sure she was allegedly part of the family now and they ought to find a way to change her back into a human and bring her home, but he wasn't necessarily eager for that to happen just yet. No, he didn't want Splinter and Leo to have to suffer any more strain on this predicament—since they were the ones most affected by it—and he didn't necessarily _want_ Karai to be a mutant snake slinking around the city. But, once they got her back, nothing would be the same. They'd have an ex-Foot living with them, a dethroned princess of the Dark Side. He was used to it just being him and his brothers and Splinter occupying the sewers together while April and Casey occasionally came around to be their living connection to the human world. But with Karai…There'd actually be a real live, human girl _living_ with them. And not just any human girl, someone they were supposed to consider their sister—even though he knew Leo thought of her differently. And he didn't like that either. Sure Karai was cool-ish, sure she kicked ass, sure she was kind of hot in a dark, malignant, human kind of way, but there was black in her core, red on her ledger. She was the Shredder's protégé—at least, at one point in time she had been. She was a by-product of evil parenting. Raphael did not trust her, and what was more, he did not trust her with Leo.

"Why don't you think about something else for a change," he said, trying to vary the subject. He got easily weary talking about Karai. "Mutation Day is only like a week away. And this time we can actually get April and Casey to bring us a real cake."

He glanced at Leo. The blue-banded turtle still had his eyes closed, a frown tugging at the corners of his lips, his brow furrowed with disturbed meditation. Raph rolled his eyes away and gritted his teeth, staring up at the sky bitterly now.

He had never really been the encouraging type. But normally, in cases of great need, he knew how to get his older brother to loosen up just as much as he knew how to set him off. However, lately he had become increasingly less endowed at getting Leonardo's spirits back up, and now it seemed Leo just didn't notice Raphael's attempts to be comforting anymore.

"It wouldn't seem right…without Karai," Leo mumbled after a long moment of silence.

"Oh right, because we've_ never_ celebrated Mutation Day without Karai."

Leo sighed yet _again_—though this time it was a tired-of-your-attitude sigh. "Do you have to have a comeback for everything?"

Raphael narrowed his eyes at the grate. "I do when you turn into a brooding jerk."

Leo groaned and sat up. "Raph, what is your problem?"

"What's _your_ problem?" Raph shot back, sitting up as well. "I'm trying to be your brother here. I'm trying to get your mind off all this drama 'bout Karai and you're just ignoring me."

"Well excuse me if I'm a little upset that Splinter's daughter—our _sister_—got turned into a giant mutant snake and has been MIA for the past three weeks!"

"Don't give me that 'sister' crap, Leo." Raph scoffed. "You know that's not how you think of her."

Leo opened his mouth and then closed it again. His eyes bounced around the tunnel as though searching desperately for a loophole, before finally narrowing back on Raphael. "That's not the point, Raph."

"Isn't it? So you're telling me that your sulking has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that you're totally into the girl that was once a black-hearted, duchess of the Foot clan and is now a rampaging mutant snake that also happens to be our weirdly related sister and so is—at the moment and probably forever—completely off-limits to you?"

Leo's jaw tightened. "Yeah, that's what I'm saying."

Raph's blood turned hot. "Well I'm calling BS on that one, Leo. You've been completely obsessed with Karai ever since—"

"Hello?"

Both boys snapped their eyes up toward the grate. In the same second Leo's hand slapped itself over Raph's mouth and dragged him back into the shadows of the tunnel. Raph narrowed his eyes and pushed Leo's arm away. Leo flashed a quick glower at him, but neither of them could hold a glare as their eyes were drawn back to the human figure crouching over the steel screen, trying to peek down into the sewer.

"Is someone down there?"

The boys glanced at each other and Leo jerked his eyes to the left. Raph's jaw tightened. He shoved his brother's carapace, half to usher him forward, half out of spite. The muscles in Leo's face rippled as though tempted to chew his brother out on the spot, but they both knew that reaction had to halt itself on account of the man still investigating the noise of the short-lived argument he'd heard just a moment ago. They had to put the fighting off for a moment.

So instead of opening his mouth—thank God—Leo turned and swiftly took off down the tunnel. Raph followed silently. And the voice of the man echoed behind them.

"Hello?"

Tunnel after tunnel coasted by as they sped around one corner and then another, passing solid, cylindrical shadows that hovered in odd places and watched them as they bolted past, the occasional splash scattering the rats at their feet. They didn't slow until they came upon the abandoned subway tracks that led to the lair. And then they paused for a minute, panting and resting their hands on their knees, taking turns glancing back behind them as though expecting to find someone following them. When no one came, Leonardo gritted his teeth and lashed a punch out at Raphael's shoulder.

"That was way too close, Raph."

The turtle in red narrowed his eyes. "So why am I the one that gets called out? What about you?" He punched his brother in return and Leo stumbled sideways.

His muscles tightened. "It was your big mouth that gave us away." He shoved Raphael back a few feet.

"Well quit bitching and I won't have to yell at you," Raph shouted, shoving Leo in response.

Less than a second of competitive growling passed between them before they pounced at each other, throwing punches and kicks, blocking and ducking each other's strikes, tumbling across the tracks—acting as one would expect ninjutsu-trained brothers with a hardened contempt toward one another to act…until streaks of purple and orange flashed by and intervened on the fight.

"Leo! Raph!" Donnie said, attempting to squeeze himself between the two.

"Dudes, chill!" Mikey cut in, throwing his kusarigama chain around Raph's wrist and yanking him back as Donnie shoved Leo in the opposite direction.

"What is with you two?" Donnie said, shifting his gaze from the leader to the rebel.

When those brown eyes hit Raphael's skin with an accusatory glance, he immediately began to boil on the inside. He could feel the flush of anger hot on his face, and tugged against Mikey's restraint as he tried to stomp forward. "Why do I always have to be the one with the problem?" he shouted. "It's Leo who's been acting like the world's gonna end because of some stupid girl!"

"She isn't just some stupid girl, Raph! How could you say that?"

"Admit it, Leo. She's got you wrapped all the way around her little kunoichi finger. And you're too hypnotized to listen to a single thing I have to say!"

"Well I never asked for your help, did I?"

All four of them began shouting then, Raph to argue with Leo, Leo to argue with Raph, and Donnie and Mikey at an attempt to contain the situation. No intelligible words could be picked out amongst the angry babble of shouts and curses and begging and prodding, and then Donatello sucked in a large breath and screamed, "Quiet!" To which only Mikey and Leo seemed able to silence themselves.

"I don't have to take this from you!" Raph said, too steamed to bite his tongue. "You're always complaining about my attitude. Well I'm sick of yours!"

He again tried to run at Leonardo, itching to get his hands on his brother, yanking the chain out of Mikey's grip. But he was stopped this time by Donatello, who punted him in the plastron with the end of his bo staff, knocking him off his feet and into Mikey, sending them both to the ground.

"Raphael. Back. Off," the least aggressive of the turtles said, poised to strike again.

"Come on, dudes," Mikey said, buried beneath his brother. "Why can't we just be cool with each other? We're all bros here, right?"

Raphael stuffed Mickey's face into the ground as he got to his feet, ignoring his little brother's wail of discomfort. He glared down his beak at Leo and hit Donnie's staff away with the back of his hand.

"Why don't you ask Leo," he said sourly.

Leonardo crossed his arms over his chest. "Whatever, Raph. You're the one that's always instigating every fight we get into. You're the one that always causes all the trouble. If anyone is questionable as a brother here it's you."

Raphael growled.

"Come on you guys. Raph. Leo…Let's just hug this out," Mikey said, opening his arms wide with that always annoying, life-is-happy smile plastered to his face like a blissfully ignorant child, eyes darting between his older brothers.

Raph shot a glare at the orange-banded turtle but before he could smack his little brother across the face, Donnie once again interfered, using his staff again to strike a warning at Raph's chest.

"Raph."

Raphael narrowed his eyes on his dorky, level-headed, purple-banded, lanky, meddling, know-it-all younger brother and ripples of anger rattled his shell, but he did not make a move against Donatello. Instead he grunted in frustration and turned his back on his brothers, stomping away to follow the tracks back home and shut himself in his room.


	3. Chapter 3

Guilt didn't come to visit him until hours later.

It had such a pesky existence—not a friend, not an enemy, not a stranger, just a thing that knocked on his brain and rudely made itself at home in his chest, as though Raphael had actually invited it in. And it always made a point of tossing and turning, positioning itself somewhere in his ribcage, twisting up his insides and making him all uncomfortable.

When it came to arguing with his brothers, Guilt was always slow to call in—most especially when he fought with Leo. But that was mostly because Guilt and Pride didn't mingle very well. Pride was always punctual, always arrived first and often tried to convince Raphael that it was his friend. It provoked temptation, always assuring him that he had every right to be angry, that he wasn't responsible for making the first move to apologize, he didn't have to be. Unlike his aversion to Guilt, he allowed Pride to swell up inside him, keep him company for a while, feed him thoughts about being the only one that understood him; he never needed anyone else. But then, just as always, Guilt became impatient and loud and busted down the door without Raphael's consent, bursting his bubble of oneness with himself by reminding him of whom else but Leonardo?

As much as he liked to think he was stronger than reality held him accountable for, he knew he could get nowhere without his brothers—Leonardo specifically. And he hated that—with an unsettling passion. He did not want to _need_ Leo, and what was more, he didn't want to admit it. But always in this battle of holding a weak front against Guilt, he'd be brought back to times when he and Leo were the best of friends, when they snuck away from the lair to watch the sky and grinned at each other across the room hours later, silently sharing the secret between them when their brothers were around. Times when Raph would successfully talk his older brother into playing a long-deserved prank on Mikey, or when Leo would consent to sparring with Raph after training, keeping silent about the fact that he knew perfectly well whenever Raphael was frustrated about unsuccessfully getting certain katas right. And worst of all, were the one or two times in all their nearly-sixteen years of existence that Leonardo had accidentally been around to witness Raphael crying, and yet had not uttered a single word about it to their brothers after all this time.

They fought, yes, sometimes more often than Raphael cared to, but despite their conflicting personalities, Leonardo was still Raph's best friend, even with bone-head Casey now in the picture. He and Casey's characters definitely blended better together and there were things they could relate to with one another that Raph could not find in any one of his brothers, but there was a history between Raph and Leo that would forever keep him tied to his older brother in a peculiarly close kind of way. Sometimes he resented it, and he was embarrassed to admit it to himself, but Raphael had always had the most reluctant soft-spot toward his blue-banded leader and it was often with visits from Guilt that that soft-spot was prodded.

So after pouting around in his room for about three hours, he finally found himself dragging his shell out of bed and walking out his bedroom door to seek out said older brother. However, when he reached the common room, only Michelangelo sat contentedly on the floor with crossed legs, bathed in the soft, blue-hued light emitting from the television, that stupid grin still pasted to his face.

Raphael never understood Mikey's unique satisfaction with the world, but at least he knew he wasn't alone in that. _None_ of them understood Mikey.

Raph's eyes rolled around every corner of the room again, but there was no Leonardo to be found. He sighed quietly and stuffed his arms tightly over his chest, migrating slowly toward his youngest brother. He stopped just before stepping down into the pit and forced himself to look tough and indifferent. He hated confronting his brother's about things like this.

"Where's Leo?" he demanded.

Mikey glanced away from the TV and his grin split even wider. "Oh hey, Raph. Done crying?"

Raph's eyes tightened. "Shut it, Mike."

Mikey shrugged Raphael's tone right off. "I'm just messing with you, bro. Leo's with Donnie." His eyes narrowed mischievously, bending the shape of the orange cloth against his brow. "Why? You gonna do the 'A' thing?" he teased.

Raph's arms tightened around his plastron. "What the freak are you talking about, Mikey?"

"You gonna _apologize_?" Mikey pressed with that extraordinary knack for digging under Raph's skin.

Raphael did not answer. He stuffily turned away from his brother instead and started making his way toward Donnie's lab.

"Big bad Raphie's getting kinda mushy under that shell! You sure you got enough huffin' and puffin' in you to blow that door down?"

Raph stopped and with the flick of a wrist, a flash of silver, and half a turn, a shuriken blade whizzed across the room and impaled the floor between Mikey's legs, making the little turtle jerk backward with a squeal.

"Not funny, Raph!"

Raphael smirked to himself and proceeded toward Donnie's lab.

However, he was brought to a stop as he came upon the door and heard the voices of his brothers engaged in what tone implied to be…laughter?

Confused, he placed one three-fingered hand on the massive steel door, which was conveniently ajar, and pulled on it ever so slightly, creating just a wide enough opening to see Donnie standing over his lab table and a wide array of brightly colored chemicals in different sized tubes and beakers as Leo leaned against the same side of the table with his arms crossed loosely over his plastron and a cool grin on his face. He muttered something Raphael could not quite make out and Donnie responded with a nerdy chuckle.

Raph just barely noticed himself frowning. What the shell was so funny? And why did Leo seem so gung-ho and happy all of a sudden? Last time Raph had checked Leonardo was a brooding, tight-ass with a raincloud hanging over his head, and now he and Donnie were giggling?

Raph caught the words, "…does not" as Donnie shook his head.

"Yes he does," Leo said, his voice rippling with amusement. "I swear to you, Donnie. I couldn't make this up."

_He?_ Raph thought. He who? They were talking about someone—_laughing_ about someone, making jokes. Immediate instinct brought his blood to a simmer as he fully and without question accused them of talking about him behind his back. _Great_, he huffed to himself. _Way to be dignified, Leo._

He still couldn't get past that stupid smirk on Leo's face—almost reminiscent of Michelangelo's—spilling out at the corners with happy-go-lucky hogwash. How did it get there on _Leo's_ face? Raphael had been doing his absolute best for weeks to get Leonardo to crack a grin, and all it had resulted in was a typical Rebel versus Leader argument. They had even gotten out the "this is your fault" spat. But a few lousy hours with Donnie and Leo was laughing? And to clarify the most ridiculous of scenarios, this was Donnie, the driest, dorkiest, least comical person in their family—unless of course they were laughing _at_ him for his incapability of being any less of a nerd-fest. What was happening to the world?

Ripples of anger made their predictable slide down Raph's spine. He didn't like this scene, and he was going to put an end to it.

He forced the ire from his face and knocked loudly on the door. Leo and Donnie's laughter quieted.

"It's open," Donnie said.

Raph pushed his way into the lab and stopped just a couple steps inside, again crossing his arms over his plastron. He leaned his weight on his left foot and kept the corners of his mouth straight.

"Hey, Raph," Donnie greeted casually, though his eyes darted to Leonardo to take in his countenance.

It was hard, but Raph forced himself to do the same and met Leo's flat gaze. A moment of tension inched by as they just stood there staring at each other. Though Leo's blue eyes gazed upon his younger brother unemotionally, Raph knew that beneath that mask of control, Leonardo was still fuming inside from the day's argument and Raphael's presence had simply been the fuel that reminded him he was, in fact, still angry.

Raph really struggled with wanting to invite Pride back in again, but he knew that would just result in them bitterly ignoring each other for the next couple of days. Even still, he couldn't seem to get his lips to come apart and form the words he had been intending to spit out since he left his room.

The silence stretched on and every second drew more and more attention to Donnie's eyes flitting almost nervously between his older brothers.

"Well, Raph?" Leo said finally, his tone cold.

Raphael took immediate offense. "Well what?"

"What did you want to say?"

Raph gritted his teeth. The words were there, on the back of his tongue, but slowly losing their momentum and beginning to slide back down his throat. He couldn't do this, not with Donnie in the room. He forced himself to uncoil and glanced around the lab nonchalantly. He shrugged his shoulders.

"Wutcha guys up to?"

Leo wouldn't buy into it. The emotionless façade came down and he glared. "Really, Raph?"

"What?" the red-banded turtle snapped, pulling on the word as though to emphasize that he couldn't be expected to come right out asking for forgiveness.

"I think Leo wants an apology," Donnie said.

"Thank you, Professor Brainioff, for pointing out the obvious," Raph said sarcastically.

"Leave Donnie out of this, Raph."

"He was the one inserting himself!"

There was just the flicker of a grimace on Don's face. "I was just trying to—"

"We know what you were doing, genius," Raph interrupted, dragging the word _genius_ through the dirtiest parts of his tongue as though it was the worst possible thing anyone could be.

"Raph, if you have something to say, spit it out; otherwise get off Donnie's shell and get out," Leo said.

Rage coursed through Raph's veins like a busted fire hydrant spewing water into the street. Normally he'd jump on Leo's comment and immediately start firing insults and verbal abuse in every direction, but in Raphael's core he knew he was in the deep-end. Leo was defending Donnie. If Raphael pressed any further forward he'd have a hell of time digging himself out of a hole to get back the brother he seemed to have already lost.

Against every defiant atom in his body, he finally sucked up a breath and said, "Okay! I'm sorry alright? Geezus!"

Leonardo narrowed his eyes.

Raph growled. "I apologize, Leo. I shouldn't have made those cracks about you and Karai, alright?"

His blue-clad brother raised an eye ridge and leaned further back against the table expectantly, crossing one ankle over the other.

Raphael felt like his jaw was about to splinter, but he forced himself to turn to Donnie and vomited the sincerest apology he could muster, which unfortunately still rang with false resonating tones. "I'm sorry for snapping at you, Donatello."

Donnie's eyes darted between his brothers a couple of times before he responded with a quiet, "It's okay, Raph."

"It isn't," Leo said tightly, still glaring at his hot-headed brother. "But…we forgive you."

Raph pursed his lips. It sent shudders of disgust down his spine to hear those words. He shouldn't even have had to apologize for anything. He remained silent. There were no words for him to say.

Leo spoke up in his place. "I'm sorry for provoking you - and saying that you were questionable as a brother."

That got him, right in the soft-spot. All defenses shut down and his muscles immediately loosened. While apologies from Raphael may have been as rare as Mikey thinking of something intelligent, Leo's apologies for his hot-tempered brother were like meeting the breathing-taking taste of Antonio's Pizza for the first time. It was way better than algae and worms. And he was sure Leo knew that. _Damn you_, Raph thought, a tiny smirk appearing in his cheek. Leo was way too good at this.

The leader stuck out a fist and the rebel slowly obliged to meet his brother's knuckles with his own, bringing a faint, but genuine, grin to Leo's face.


	4. Chapter 4

Hours later, Donatello sat on a stool in his lab, tongue poking out between his teeth as he lost himself in his own form of meditation. The beakers and glass tubes that had been splayed across the table still littered his workspace, if but in a different arrangement, along with a scattering of papers all teeming with the scratchy yet refined scrawl of his handwriting. His brown eyes constantly darted to and from his notes, squinting as he occasionally leaned in closer to decipher what he had and had not crossed out upon fabricating this intricate formula the first time.

He peeked into the eyepiece of his microscope to check the current stage of the mutated cell sample he'd procured from his own tissues.

Once upon a time, he had been able to acquire samples from a seemingly willing Timothy, but seeing as the mutant himself now stood in an everlasting freeze in the corner of his lab, Donatello had become his own source of bio samples.

It saddened him, every time he glanced up and caught a glimpse of the statue that had once been his responsibility—still _was_ his responsibility. It only reminded him of his mistakes, his failures, of the promises he had made, and it only fueled him with determination to yank another batch of retro-mutagen out of thin air as everyone—including himself—demanded. However, it seemed the list of mutants to rectify had only grown longer, priorities shifting again and again. Even if Donatello managed to recreate the antigen that had taken him months to produce in the first place, Timothy would again have to wait. He had Karai to think about now.

Though he did not feel the same fire alight in his determination to fix Karai as he'd had to remedy the accident that had taken place with April's father, he knew this needed to be done and he was adamant about completing it in as timely a manner as possible.

He had once seen Karai as the enemy, as a refuting force and a threat, not only to his family, but to April as well, and that had quite easily fueled within him a hatred for her. To readjust his feelings was difficult, but upon considering April's conviction of Karai as a new-found ally and witnessing firsthand Karai's courage to, not only go against the man she'd known her whole life to be a father to her, but courage to protect his brothers and his sensei despite what said father-figure had raised and trained her for as well, he was able to let go of any doubts he had about Karai and accept her as a new addition to the family. But it wasn't just his own fortitude to remedy this problem of his "sister" being a mutant snake that drove him to recreate the retro-mutagen. It was also the aching hollowness he saw in his sensei's eyes, in his _brother's_ eyes, every day that Karai remained missing and the cure for her condition remained unfinished.

It was Donatello's job to fix things. To create remedies for all ailments that plagued his family. They were broken without Karai. They always had been. They had just never realized it until recently—until they'd finally found Splinter's long-lost daughter and had welcomed her into their home for a brief period of time. And now she was gone again, and the devastation in Splinter's features, of losing his daughter a second time, was something Donatello could not bear to look upon anymore.

And what was worse, Leonardo was just as affected. It wasn't enough that Donnie had to feel the pressure of his father's pain, but he had to endure his brother's as well. Leonardo, who always refused to give in to pain and obscurity, who stood his ground with his chin held high as though he could fight off the world without faltering, was feeling the sting of depression and did not hide it very well. Donatello, like Raphael, watched his older brother become depleted of hope day after day, losing himself in a gloom that latched onto his skin like he was the only source for its own personal fuel left in the world and dragging him down into a place his brothers found it difficult to rescue him from. Leonardo was broken. And Donatello had to fix that.

Donnie pushed the microscope off to the side and dragged his finger across the labels of each beaker until he found the one he was looking for and pulled it toward him. He plucked a test tube from the rack it was nestled in, glanced at his notes, did a double-take just to make sure, and then lowered his eyes to level with the rim of the beaker as he slowly added one chemical to the other. He noticed his hand trembling slightly as he performed this procedure and bit down harder on his tongue, as though this would somehow force his exhausted limbs to become still.

Once the substance from the test tube had been emptied into the beaker and turned the compound an almost florescent blue, he placed the tube back in its designated slot and rubbed his eyes. He glanced at the clock hanging on the wall to his right and noticed with immense frustration that the second hand had again stopped ticking and now hovered on the eight with a twitch, as though it was suffering a great malfunction and was shuddering with glitches of laughter, reminding him of his unhealthy relationship with time.

He pushed back on his stool, scrapping the wooden pegs against the concrete floor and took the clock down from the wall. After sitting back down, he pulled open a drawer and shuffled tools around until he found a screwdriver and again inserted his tongue between his teeth as he forcefully attacked the disobedient clock, cracking it open to diagnose its illness.

A soft knock came to the door then, penetrating the silence of his work. It was probably Splinter, checking in to affirm that his busy-minded son was still awake and to force him to go to sleep.

Donatello muttered a response to the intrusion but kept his eyes on the cogs in the clock until he heard the heavy door open and close and felt a presence slightly different from his sensei's. He looked up to see his eldest brother coming toward him with a stony look of restlessness in his eyes.

Leo shuffled across the room in silence and pulled himself up to sit on the opposite corner of the table, shrugging his shoulders up to his neck as he pressed his palms against the surface. He looked at Donnie with an expression the younger turtle could not quite decipher just then.

Donnie dropped his gaze back down to the clock in his hands, unable to meet the ghost in his brother's eyes. "Are you here to tell me I should be in bed?" he asked.

"Actually…I couldn't sleep," Leo responded quietly.

Donnie's lips pursed. He looked away from his work yet again and glanced quickly at his brother, but did not speak.

"I was wondering if you needed any help," Leo added.

The weight of a constant worry was prominent in the older turtle's blue eyes. He was looking for a distraction from it. And Donatello could only oblige.

"Well," he sighed. "You wouldn't happen to know what time it is would you?"

"Two twenty-five last time I checked."

"And when was that?"

"Like two minutes ago."

Donnie nodded and flipped the clock over, face up. He slowly turned the dial on the back, watching as it pulled the minute hand in a slow yet dizzying circle until the time was set at two twenty-seven. He flicked the back of the clock and the second hand stuttered and then began its jerking trek around each number in a clockwise motion. He screwed the back in place again and then returned the clock to the wall and the screwdriver to its home in the pit of tools. He then returned himself to his stool and nodded to an empty tomato soup can of glass stirring rods next to Leo's thumb.

"Can you hand me one of those?"

Leo took his time picking just the right rod and handed it to his brother. Donatello gave him a small, appreciative smile and proceeded to swirl the stick around the florescent blue compound he'd just created.

"So," he sighed conversationally. "What's on your mind? Or don't you want to talk about it?"

Leo stared into the beaker of eddying blue substance with a misty gaze. "I—do," he said tentatively.

Donatello gave a curt nod, indicating that he was listening, and remained silent while his older brother vocalized his reservations.

"I just feel like there's more that I could be doing—_should_ be doing," Leo sighed. "But I don't know what that is. I don't know what _else_ there is; if there's some way to make it all happen faster, to get Karai back _now_."

Donatello watched his brother's shoulders slump in frustration and sympathized as he continued to twirl the stick around the beaker. He glanced at the clock on the wall which was ticking as it was supposed to now. He'd have to continue stirring the mixture for another five minutes.

"I know what you mean Leo," he said kindly. "I always feel that way…Like right now, for example. I wish I could just poof this retro-mutagen into existence, that it could be done without having to spend so much time laboring on it, making sure every detail is precise. But I know if I rush it, it's not going to turn out right and I'd only be generating a bigger dilemma." He rubbed his eyes again and kept stirring.

"It's like, I'm trying to work as fast as I can, because I know the sooner I get it done, the sooner we'll be one step closer to curing Karai and Timothy and so many others that have come in contact with the mutagen because of us—because of _me_. But no matter how quickly I want to get it done there's this strain of needed perfection that's holding me back and it's infuriating."

He didn't mean for his tone to evolve into frustration at the end of this sympathetic speech, but it practically forced itself out of his throat and bounced off of his tongue freely, heatedly. He rubbed his eyes again.

Leonardo gazed at him with concern and just a smidgen of guilt creasing his brow. "I'm—sorry Donnie. I never meant to put you under so much pressure."

Donnie sighed silently and then forced a nonchalant smile to the corner of his mouth. "It's not you Leo. I put pressure on _myself_. Besides, I've been known to work pretty well under stressful situations."

Leo chuckled and raised an eye ridge.

"What?" Donnie smirked. "You don't agree?"

"Well, there was that one time with the mutagen bomb the Kraang rigged."

"I defused it didn't I?"

"Only after you panicked," Leo laughed. "And I specifically remember you saying, 'I cannot work with all this pressure!'" he mocked in a voice an octave higher than normal, slapping his hands on either side of his face to recreate the expression Donnie had let slip that moment.

"Oh cut me some slack Leo. That was the first time I'd ever had to neutralize an actual bomb with a time limit…And I was successful, so there."

"Yeah, I guess you were," Leonardo chuckled. He smiled, almost warmly, as his eyes glazed over with reminiscence for a moment, lost in the swirls of blue still floating around the beaker in front of Donatello. Then slowly, the look of nostalgia diminished and became a straight frown.

"Donnie?"

"Yeah Leo?"

"Can I um—ask you something?"

Donatello nodded, glancing at the clock again. "Sure."

The older turtle bit the inside of his lip almost timidly.

It was unlike Leo to be nervous. Sure he had moments of doubt—mostly when he questioned himself as a leader—but he was often able to undermine the issue with a cock of his head and a stuffy reassurance that he was the only one capable of being who he was, constantly reminding himself that he had three younger brothers to protect and provide guidance for. Raphael may have been a little more head-strong, but he wasn't the only one of them who often felt a little more than cocky about himself. So for Leonardo to reveal signs of uncertainty and confusion, was a little disconcerting to Donnie—which was more than likely the exact reason Leo never let on those feelings in the first place.

The turtle in blue finally took a breath. "When we didn't see April those couple of weeks after Mr. O'Neil got mutated…What did you do—you know—to cope?"

Donnie tilted his head observantly. He thought he saw a glimpse of where this was going. "I—did what I always do." He shrugged. "I fixed things—or at least I tried to."

Donatello watched his older brother's eyes shine with a glaze of hopelessness as he nodded vacantly and stared now at the floor. Again, Donnie sympathized.

"And you?" he asked quietly.

Leo snapped his head back up and looked at his brother quizzically.

"What do _you_ do?

Leo frowned. "Turn into a brooding jerk apparently."

Donatello let his expression fall, sharing in a moment of cohesion with his older brother's feelings. "Raph doesn't get it."

Leo shook his head in agreement then looked to Donnie with eyes that reflected a small dosage of relief. "But you do." The corner of his mouth sloped even more. "It's stupid isn't it?"

Donnie found himself nodding, both honestly and in full understanding. "About as stupid as me and April."

Leo's chest inflated and a long sigh was released through his nose. "How do you always seem so…hopeful?"

Donnie shrugged, glancing absentmindedly toward the framed photograph of him and April at the park, a happy little burst of joy frozen in time, stuck in the smile on April's face as his arms stretched out, not only to propel her forward, but to take her back up in his protective embrace whenever she was to swing back.

"Sometimes it's easier to hope in vain than to realize that…" He stopped, a knot forming in his throat, pulling down his chest as the smile in that beautiful red-head's cheeks seemed to float farther and farther out of reach.

"You'll be alone," Leo finished, in a tone full of such personal sorrows that Donnie could feel his heart breaking, not just for himself, but for his brother as well.

Their eyes connected again and for a while they sat there in silence, embracing one another's long-reserved heartaches. It wasn't comforting so much as it was relieving, now understanding with confidence that they weren't alone in the tone of their emotions, in the way they cried out internally. It was on the table now. They each had a brother they could identify with, rather than being scorned or teased for how they felt and how ridiculously impossible their longing remained to be.

The blue-banded turtle heaved another sigh and broke his gaze. "It always makes me think…Even if we find Karai, and you finish the retro-mutagen, and we can change her back, she's still going to be…"

"Human," Donnie finished.

Leo shuddered, as though the word was tabooed.

Donnie watched his jaw flutter, watched a bright, burning anger suddenly flare up on his brother's face as all the unfairness of the world made a home in his coiling muscles. All the laughter and teasing that Donatello had ever endured seemed to bounce around the room relentlessly in conjunction to his brother's sudden plunge into a silent rage. But he could only stomach it and watch as it swelled up, not within his own self which desperately wished to be angry too, but in Leo instead. It inflated his brother's chest, crawled up his throat, and burst through his lips in a stream of bitterness.

"Do you ever think about how much of a freak you are?" he asked, hurt dripping from his voice as he stared down at his own green, three-fingered hand.

Donnie nodded vacantly. "All the time," he whispered.

When these soft-spoken words reached Leo's ears, the anger flushed from his face, leaving just as quickly as it had come, and his eyes again swept toward Donatello, a gloss shining over his blue irises.

"I'm sorry Donnie," he breathed, wiping the side of his face his younger brother could not see.

"It's okay Leo. I…" His eyes shifted uneasily. "I've tried to make sense of it. It's just…We weren't made for…human interaction," he mumbled.

"Then what _were_ we made for?"

The purple-banded turtle somehow managed a satiric smile and shrugged. "Saving the world?"

Leo shook his head, in no mood to play hero at the moment. His grip tightened on the edge of the table. "I try to accept it but…That isn't enough."

"I know."

Donnie let the stirring rod slip out of his pinched fingers. He just realized it had been well past five minutes. He lifted the beaker and watched its contents spin in a seemingly endless cycle, dizzying his mind, twisting his stomach with complicated emotions he was sure not even a sixteen-year-old _human_ could make sense of.

"Unfortunately," Donnie exhaled. "We can't just pour retro-mutagen on ourselves and poof into human beings…Though sometimes I wish it were that simple."

Leo looked at him with a twisted mix of both longing and disgust, as though he was reluctant to agree but agreed nonetheless.

Donnie set the beaker down with another tiny sigh and rubbed his eyes again. He wasn't going to get any further on the antidote tonight.

Leo seemed to finally catch on to the exhaustion in Donnie's eyes and pushed himself off the table. "You need to sleep."

Donatello didn't argue—he hardly ever did with Leo. He slid off his stool and walked with his brother toward the door of the lab, flicking off the light as they exited the room. Neither of them said a word until it was time to split up in opposite directions to retreat to their respective rooms, then Leo turned.

"Donnie?"

The purple-clad turtle stopped and blinked at his brother blearily.

"Thanks—for understanding," Leo mumbled.

Donnie managed a small smile. "Sure thing Leo…Thanks for handing me that stirring rod."

Leo released a wispy chuckle and shook his head, turning for his room again. "Night Don."

"Goodnight Leo."

* * *

**I know the story's moving kind of slow but I promise it'll pick up in a minute...Please, please, please let me know what you ****think of it so far!  
**


	5. Chapter 5

**So this chapter is a tad shorter than the others, but relevant...Raph and Mikey are so cute. Alright...they're ALL terribly adorable.**

**Disclaimer: While I do also enjoy tormenting my little sister with the poem "Antigonish [I met a man who wasn't there]" by Hughes Mearns, such a work is not mine. But thanks Mearns!**

* * *

Raphael boxed the lifeless dummy with fists that strained every stitch and patch job it had acquired over the years, and yet it continued to hang boldly before the temperamental turtle as though asking for more, swinging and shuddering on its chain defiantly. Raphael gladly obliged to keep the punches rolling as a small simmer of frustration bubbled up in his veins and lashed out each blow for him, leaving his mind free to wander in a tinted fog.

The only other soul in the common area was Mikey, hanging upside down on the couch with a comic book hovering over his smiling face, the television flashing shots of _Super Robo Mecha Force Five_ in the background. Leonardo was in the lab with Donnie—_again_. This was the fourth day in a row, and Raph didn't get it. What was so interesting about Donatello the Potions Master that Leo couldn't watch an episode of _SRMFF_ with Mikey or join Raphael in a bit of off-the-clock training? Leo _loved_ off-the-clock training—practically lived for it—and yet instead of challenging his favorite opponent to a sparring match he was with their nerd-tastic younger brother playing scientist.

Yeah sure, Raph understood that Leo was a little more than anxious for the retro-mutagen to be done, but did he really expect the process to go any faster by bothering Donnie about it? It wasn't like he could be any help to the guy that had spent hours explaining to them why their skin was green when Michelangelo had so foolishly asked. So what were they doing? What could Leo possibly have to gain from getting butt sores in Donnie's lab every day? They had even almost missed their patrol the other night because Leonardo had "lost the time" chatting with Donnie and neither had bothered to leave the lab until Mikey and Raph had pounded on the door and demanded to know why they hadn't left for the surface yet.

Raph enjoyed a small break from his brothers every now and then but this was just irritating. He'd hardly even spoken to his older brother since they'd apologized to each other days ago, except to be turned down whenever he'd asked Leo if he wanted to join him in his daily workout, or play him in virtual hockey, or go out for a moment to take a break from being stuck in the lair with Mikey all day.

_Whatever_, Raph thought sourly as he slammed his fist into the dummy's gut. _Who needs Leo anyway?_

"Hey Raph."

Raphael jumped about a foot as his youngest brother materialized right beside him with that same stupidly goofy grin staining his freckled cheeks.

"Geezus Mikey," Raph exclaimed. He snatched his brother's comic book from his hands and threw it back at his face. "I told you to stop doing that."

Mikey stuck his tongue out and stooped to pick up his comic from where it had dropped on the floor. "Thanks a lot Raph, you probably wrinkled it."

"What do you _want_ Mike?" Raph growled, resuming his attack on the defenseless, cotton-stuffed dummy. At least it received him less chastising than beating the stuffing out of the dummy that had just attached itself to his shoulder.

"Wanna play Mazes &amp; Mutants?" the little turtle asked animatedly, brushing off his brother's tone as he always so effortlessly did.

"No," Raph said shortly. "What's the point if Donnie and Leo aren't gonna play?"

"I was thinking we go ask them."

Raph snorted. "Yeah right. They're way too busy being best friends without us; you might as well save yourself the trouble."

There was silence from Mikey's end, which Raphael didn't mind a single bit, until that orange-banded face popped up from behind the stuffed victim with an all-knowing smirk. Raph paused his strikes and narrowed his eyes at his little brother.

"What?" he demanded.

"Are you_ jealous_ Raphie?"

"No." Hesitation…The petulant turtle's face screwed up defensively and he added in a bark, "Jealous of _what_?"

Michelangelo's grin curled up assuredly. "Oh come on Raph," he coaxed. "I saw your face when Leo told you he didn't want to play you in virtual hockey because he was hanging with D."

Raphael could feel a growl bubbling up behind his plastron. "What of it?" he snapped, pounding at the dummy again, not caring and slightly hopeful that one of his fists might accidently tag his brother's beak. Mikey took half a step back and held the imitation enemy in place, still running his mouth.

"You're totally pissed that Leo and Donnie have been spending so much time together."

"That's retarded Mikey," Raph said through his teeth. "I don't give a flying crap _what_ Leo and Donnie do."

"_Riiight_," Mikey sang.

That did it. It was a typical snap—a reaction—nothing abnormal in the context of his relationship with that wide-eyed little turtle that irked his nerves so much. Yet, when the ill-tempered, older brother allowed his hand to backslap his sibling's freckled cheek, there was something very inadvertently angry about his strike.

Still…He didn't feel sorry for it.

Mikey's face bounced off of the mock villain's head and he cupped his hands around his beak as though to protect it from further blows. "Ow!"

"Raph what're you doing to Mikey?" a voice sighed in exasperation.

Raph turned to see his older brother finally emerging from the lab with no gangly, purple-banded, geek in his wake, which relieved the red-clad turtle more than it should have.

"Nothing I don't normally do," he responded, trying not make his twitching gaze obvious as he continually glanced back and forth between Leonardo and the lab door which remained closed. He didn't smile.

"Finished dissecting cats already?" he teased.

Michelangelo's jaw nearly hit the floor. "Raph, that's sick!"

Leo rolled his eyes. "You shouldn't make jokes like that. You'll scar Mikey for life…Or at least more so than you already have. Remember the 'man who wasn't there?'"

"Leo!"

Raph's grin stretched devilishly. "Oh yeah," he chuckled over Mikey's squeal. "Yesterday, upon the stair…"

"Stop it. Stop it!" Mikey slapped his hands over his ears and made to dart away but Raph had already swung out an arm to catch his little brother in a head-lock.

"I met a man who wasn't there…"

"Raph I'm serious!"

"He wasn't there again today/ I wish, I wish he'd go away…"

Mikey whined and wiggled fiercely until Raph finally released his grip and the little turtle stumbled back into the dummy. His older brothers' laughter echoed rudely around the room.

"You _know _that poem creeps me out!"

Leo shrugged. "Look at it this way Mike, you single-handedly gave Raph an excuse to read _real_ literature for a change."

"Never enjoyed poetry so much in my life," Raph teased, leaning with one elbow against the dummy's shoulder. He sighed contentedly then pushed his little brother off of his feet just for the heck of it. "So Leo, Mikey wants to play that stupid role playing game you guys are all geeked out about. You in?"

The moment the blue tails of Leo's bandana began to sway, Raph's stomach churned and his ire sparked again. Donnie and Mikey had taken a day to record his flare-ups once. The longest he'd been able to stay calm was ten minutes and thirty-three seconds.

"Not now Raph. Donnie says this part of the procedure has to be done without any interruptions. He just needs me to get him two kilograms of water." Leo paused. "Do either of you know how to measure a kilogram?"

"No," Raph scoffed. "There's a reason Donnie knows this stuff and we don't. Why can't he get his own water? And by the way, what could you possibly be doing in there that's actually helping him Leo?" he asked bluntly, unable to suppress his annoyance.

Leo's expression flattened. "More than what you've ever done to help, that's for sure," he snapped, turning away to march into the kitchen before his younger brother to retaliate.

"Well that didn't take long," Mikey said satisfactorily, sitting with his hands holding his feet together in the same spot Raphael had pushed him down in.

The hot-tempered turtle gritted his teeth and smacked the back of his brother's head.

"Ow!"


	6. Chapter 6

It was difficult to concentrate. Though he was able to detach himself from his physical form and become one entity with all realities contained in this universe, though he was so removed from himself that he could practically see his own rigid, unmoving, rat-like form sitting under the spotted white-blue light in the dojo, he could still feel the knot of the same horrible, frightening, and hopeless realism that had kept him tethered to earth for weeks and prevented him from releasing his worries.

Why did he mediate? He found himself asking. To be lost in a utopia that held no truth, only to return hours later and cripple under the weight of utter disappointment upon realizing that nothing had changed while he was gone?

His nose twitched and he flicked his head to the side as though to cast off the whispered lies that resided in the depths of his mind. He meditated in order to find acceptance, to ease himself into truths he often found to be cruel and ruthless. He meditated in order to keep a screen of calm and patience, for such an air was required of him.

Over the years, he had learned that teenage boys do not respond as well to aggression and force as they do to patience and profound wisdom. It was better to leave them utterly confused and questioning than for them to be angry and resentful. And in this way, he relieved himself of further stress—raising four boys was enough pressure to undertake as it was.

And as though God himself wished to accentuate this point in a very blunt manner, a devastating crash of breaking glass, accompanied by the shrill wail of his youngest son, rang in his ears and caused them to instinctively flatten against his head, rejecting the noise.

"Raph, quit it!" Michelangelo whined.

"Not until you take it back," shouted the voice of his most aggressive child.

Splinter could feel his chest inflating of its own accord and then releasing a long and exasperated breath. He slowly opened his eyes and wished that the raw atmosphere of constant noise—of griping and fighting and arguing and whining—that lived in his home twenty-four seven could match the emptiness, and what would otherwise be silence, of the dojo.

Splinter's muscles coiled as another crash ensued, followed by a stream of words Splinter knew for a fact he had told his second eldest son never to repeat. This in turn was pursued by a teasing laugh that was soon silenced and then blossomed into another screech of pain.

"Stop it! Okay! I take it back!"

"Really? Then how come I'm not buyin' it?"

"Owwwwwww!"

Splinter squinted his eyes until they finally closed again. As much as he cringed at the pleas and cries of any of his sons forced under Raphael's untethered rage, he could not bring himself to stand and put an end to poor Michelangelo's suffering. But this was only possible because he knew his youngest was resilient and would bounce back with an unscathed grin to provoke his older brother even further.

But even as he attempted to ignore the ruckus, he knew his concentration had been completely severed and was beyond retrieving. His amber eyes came into focus again as he opened them and glanced to his right at the framed photograph of his former self accompanied by the elegant figure of his lost love and a bundle of fresh life for which he had also failed.

His back teeth came together at the shuddering of his fur and he looked away, glaring at the rug beneath him to prevent the sting that had already begun to attack his eyes. He breathed deeply and tried to regain his focus, but of all the awareness he had ever achieved in his five decades of life, he was now only conscious of the very heavy way in which his heart beat. It even took him a few extended seconds to realize that a young presence had joined him.

He lifted his eyes to meet those of his eldest son who now stood timidly in the doorway, half hiding behind the entrance as though afraid to approach the obvious cloud of misery engulfing his sensei. This sight only made Splinter's heart tense even more. There was such innocence in the turtle's blue eyes. He did not wish for it to be contaminated by the long years of suffering that Splinter had endured. However, in just one short year it seemed, Leonardo's eyes had already acquired a saddening tint of age. This worried Splinter very much. Of all his sons, he knew that Leonardo was most capable of handling life's pressures, but he was also the one most likely to be affected by it. Even in the past few weeks, Leonardo had grown less and less like himself and more aged and troubled, and to Splinter this had not gone unnoticed.

"Come in, my son," he said patiently, though he knew at this very moment he was most vulnerable and probably would not be able to control the emotions he wished none of his sons to witness if they started to burn.

Leonardo obediently inched forward and kneeled before his sensei, bowing respectfully. When he lifted his head, however, his blue eyes were cast to the side and he did not speak.

"What troubles you, Leonardo?"

The young turtle shook his head as though to rid himself of the stresses clinging like water droplets to his face. They went nowhere. But the boy proceeded to speak anyway, meeting his father's eyes with a thin film of indifference attempting to hide his woes.

"I just wanted to see how you were doing, Sensei." His blue eyes dropped a fraction of an inch and his voice lowered itself. "You've been meditating for a long time."

Though it was beside him to do so in such an open moment, Splinter felt a frown tugging on the corner of his mouth.

He suddenly saw himself as a freshly mutated rat, kneeling on the filth-riddled floor of the sewer with no home, no food, no identity, and four peculiar baby turtles of which he had no idea what to do with. Two of them were fighting, one was retracted halfway into its shell, huddled in the shadows, and the fourth had perched itself right in front of him, blinking up at him with round, innocent, curious, blue eyes as though silently asking him the very same question that had, at that point, been plaguing his mind for hours: "What are you going to do now?"

In his own mind, that question had been voiced with bitterness and taunting, sneering at him as though to remind him that this new predicament he'd found himself in was the cause of his own doing. But from the eyes of that unblemished baby turtle it was a question brimming with trust he knew he did not deserve. But, what else did the child have to believe in?

Now, nearly sixteen years later, he gazed into those acquitted blue eyes and felt as though he had failed his family all over again. It had indeed been hours since he had last spoken to any one of his sons. It was no wonder they had begun to tear up the lair. In fact, ever since Karai's mutation weeks ago, he had failed to give any one of his children the attention they regularly required of him.

His nose dropped toward the floor in shame. "I am sorry, my son. I have been attempting to make sense of our—dilemma."

A half glaze of frail hopefulness crossed the eyes of his eldest son. "Donnie's actually getting somewhere on the retro-mutagen. He says it shouldn't take too much longer, though he's going to need more mutagen soon in order to stay on track. You know he won't sleep until it's done."

A knot formed in Splinter's throat and he struggled to swallow it without letting on that it existed. "Your brother works hard," he said quietly, almost as though he was speaking to himself. "I trust he will do what he feels is necessary. But, Leonardo…"

The young turtle blinked at him expectantly.

"I do not want you or your brothers to lose yourselves in this strain. I know that it is hard for you, and I know that Donatello feels he must exhaust himself to fix what, in his mind, is broken for everyone. But you cannot let him forget his responsibilities to himself, and you cannot expect him to do more than what he is limited to."

Leonardo frowned, his mask creased upon his brow.

"Do not push your brother too hard," Splinter elaborated. "Like us, he can only do so much."

The turtle's cheeks reddened, half hidden beneath the blue cloth obscuring his face. "I…" His eyes fell with his shoulders. "Hai, Sensei."

Splinter nodded his head once, in such a way that was almost reminiscent of a bow. "Now, I must ask you to attend to your brothers. I do not wish to lose my sons to their own rivalry."

As he said this, there was a floor-rattling smash and an enraged shout of "Mikey!"

Leonardo blinked, almost as though the noise had not registered to him until his sensei had brought attention to it. He bowed again. "Hai, Sensei."

Splinter watched as his eldest son stood to leave. He calculated his mannerisms, the heavy way in which Leonardo shuffled toward the doorway and the slight bend of his neck as he gazed down at the floor. Even if his son did not radiate disappointment, Splinter would've been able to catch the defeat in the teenager's eyes as he glanced over his shoulder once before disappearing from the dojo.

Splinter closed his eyes and allowed himself a long sigh.


	7. Chapter 7

**So from this point on I'm afraid my momentum on this thing is going to hit an unfortunate decline. School has started back up and I've got an insane amount of reading to do-and so far it's only been two days*sigh*...college. But here's a nice chunk of story for you, hope it keeps you interested and I promise to update as often as possible. **

**Also, please excuse me for any inaccuracies.**

* * *

Sixteen.

Sixteen!

_Six_teen…

The more he repeated it to himself in his mind, the stranger it sounded. It had been sixteen years exactly since he and his family had been morphed into the odd collection of creatures they were today. Sixteen years since he and his brothers had been adopted by a rat and began their lives in the sewers. Even to him, a mutant turtle trained in the art of ninjutsu, that was a strange existence to have. He could only shudder at the reaction the rest of the world might have—the _human_ world—people who believed they thrived in a normal, non-fantastical biosphere, without reptilian _things_ living beneath their feet with a rat-man. It was just strange.

And yet, that was his life. And, though over the years he'd been constantly reminded that he and his family were different than every other living thing, it was no less the norm for him. It was the way he had been raised, the way he had always seen himself, and his brothers, and his sensei. They were mutant turtles, ninja turtles…but also teenagers, as much as any human being would be, had been, or currently was—just like April and Casey.

It was interesting, he thought as he lay back on his carapace, staring up at his dim ceiling, one hand behind his head and the other twirling a sai expertly between his fingers. Splinter had expressed to them that he was not sure when exactly each of his terrapin sons had hatched. He only knew, by word of the pet store owner that had taken his money, that they had hatched only within a few days of each other before Splinter had purchased them. Their age, as far as who hatched first and who last, was anybody's guess. So, how had Splinter and the pet store owner decided who held what age over who?

It was only on occasions such as these that Raph questioned these kinds of things. While he would never see either Mikey or Donnie as being even an hour older than himself, he of course questioned the declaration that Leonardo was the oldest of the four of them. But maybe that was just the predictable complex of any child that held the second ranking in their family.

If it was something determined by personality, sure, he supposed he would buy into the Leonardo-is-the-big-brother bit, but only because Leo made an act of it. Only because he protected Mikey and Donnie from verbal abuse, and amused Raph by taking on his challenges, and constantly consulted with Splinter about how to contain his brothers' energy, and took the blame for things that weren't his doing, and often took a contemplative stance with his hands on his hips, gazing upon his brothers with the glimmer of affection in his eyes when he thought none of them were paying attention to him…Other than that Raph didn't understand it.

A knock resonated through the shadows. "Raph?"

He clutched the handle of his sai firmly in his fist and glanced toward his bedroom door. "What?"

The door opened.

It was Leo…And he brought with him a scent the "second eldest" turtle was unfamiliar with. It was warm and sweet and filled his entire room in a matter of seconds, blending into the shadows and engulfing his skin with an intangible coziness. The smell was so compelling, in fact, that he could practically see it dancing into his room in wispy swirls of pale colors, like in a cartoon. He sat up, drawn by the aroma that flooded his tongue and stirred his stomach with a mummer of desire.

"What is that?" he asked.

Leo shrugged. "I dunno. Mikey's making something. April brought him groceries about an hour ago and he banned us all from the kitchen. He says it's a surprise."

"That little maggot." Raph swung his feet to the floor and started for his door, fully intending to shake the answer out of Mikey's ears.

He was stopped by the force of Leo's hand on his plastron.

"Humor him for once Raph. He's really excited about this."

The red-banded turtle rolled his eyes. "Okay, fine whatever." He crossed his arms, swinging his sai loosely from his fingers. "What did you come in here for?"

Leo dropped his hand and looked upon his brother sternly. "Donnie needs more mutagen."

Raph raised an eye ridge. "What, _now_?"

His leader nodded. "We're leaving in an hour."

"What about Mikey's surprise?"

"It has to cool off."

Raph jumped as his youngest brother's voice popped into the shadows of his doorway accompanied by his grinning, freckled face.

"Mikey, I swear…Do that again and this is going through one ear and out the other," he threatened, shaking his sai in front of his brother's beak.

Mikey clapped his hands on either side of his head and tightened his eyes. "You wouldn't. Not if you want your share of the surprise."

"I hate surprises," Raph grumbled.

"Aw really?" Mikey cooed in a sugary voice. "Then I probably shouldn't do _this_!" The moment the last word left his tongue, Leo ducked and Raph was shot in the face by a bubbly, rubbery force that erupted against his beak and sent a burst of water in every direction, yet somehow only managed to splash _him_.

Raph curled his fists and growled through his teeth as cold droplets of filtered sewer water rolled down his coiling muscles and hit the floor at his feet as his brothers snickered.

Mikey threw up his hands triumphantly. "Happy Mutation Day!"

"Happy Mutation Day!" echoed Leo…and Donnie, who three seconds before, Raph was unaware had emerged from his lab.

The second eldest smirked heatedly and extracted his second sai, already set to pounce. "Happy Shove What You Can Through Mikey's Head Day!"

Michelangelo squealed and took off. Raph didn't miss a beat. He pushed past Leo and tore off after the little turtle jerk.

* * *

An hour later, his mask was still soaked, and though the wind that kissed his face was warm, it spread a chill about his eyes, over his ears, and wherever the tails of his mask brushed against the back of his head and neck.

He and two of his three brothers were perched on the ledge of the building directly across the street from TCRI, glaring through the night at the steadfast edifice.

He found it annoyingly funny that the Kraang were so stubborn. Their ragtag team of under-aged ninjas had managed to uncover nearly every Kraang facility the alien scumbags had scattering the city and they refused to take their global takeover elsewhere, or better yet, seek out decent hiding places. They could've flattered the turtles a little by at least making themselves harder to find. But no…They seemed ever content on rebuilding the same building the turtles had destroyed months ago and staying put right where they were. It was rather insulting actually. Raph didn't like it when he hit an opponent and they didn't stay down, and the Kraang had had their metallic butts handed to them so many times, it was as though they had taken the KICK ME sign off of their back and put it on their own forehead just to be spiteful. Man, were they going to get it.

"Alright team," Leonardo spoke up, using that ever exasperating 'hero voice' of his. "We're here for one thing and one thing only…mutagen, which means—if we can avoid it—we're_ not_ going to pick a fight with the Kraang." At this he shot his supervisory blue gaze at Raph who rolled his eyes and looked away.

"Yeah, I got you the first five times Leo. Let's just do this so Mikey can quit hinting about his stupid surprise."

"It's a_ really_ good one," Mikey sang, all smiles and no hands as he rocked on his shell on the ledge of the building.

Raph kicked out one of his legs and swept his brother onto the roof, not without brute force.

"Ouch!"

Leo hissed through his teeth. "You guys, we're—"

"Ninjas," Raph cut in.

"And we're supposed to be silent," Mikey mocked in his best Leo voice, now spinning in circles on his carapace with his feet in the air.

"Got_ that_ the first thousand times too."

The blue-clad turtle tightened his eyes. "Apparently not."

Leo's T-phone vibrated against the bridge of his shell and he immediately dropped his glare. "That's Donnie," he said—quite unnecessarily.

Raph knew the plan, and all of its niceties, just as well as the 'master strategist.' In no way did it need to be reiterated. The only one of them who was still more than likely deftly unaware of what was happening was the one now testing his flexibility as he tried to grab his head with his own feet. But they had stopped wasting time repeating their plans to Mikey ages ago. He was extraordinarily talented at improvising anyway—so long as he kept his hands off of any buttons it usually wasn't a problem…Except that the Kraang seemed to have as much of a fascination in buttons as the little turtle in orange.

"No shit Sherlock," Raph spat out sarcastically. "I'm pretty sure the pizza guy isn't patched into our network. Who else would it be?"

Leo's eyes did a three-sixty roll in his sockets as Michelangelo giggled. "_What_ did Master Splinter tell you about using language like that?"

"Oh, I'm sorry Mom. Are we going to put this mission on pause so I can suck on a bar of soap?"

A nice hot growl squeezed between the "patient leader's" teeth. "Ugh, what is _with_ you Raph?"

"What's with me is that Donnie disabled the security system a whole thirty seconds ago and yet we're still standing here growling over the city like friggin' Batman!"

"Ha, that's totally you bro," Mikey piped smiling at his fuming brother in red.

"Mikey!"

Michelangelo dipped halfway into his shell at the force of Raph's bellow, but never lost his smile. Raphael vowed one day to permanently slap that persistent little crescent off his face.

"All right enough!" Leo shouted. "Let's _go_."

He didn't wait for Raph to make a comment. He pulled out his grappling hook, fired it without a second's hesitation and then zip-lined off the building, straight through the window that Donatello had pushed open a mere second beforehand. Raph gritted his teeth and tried not to growl too loudly as that blue-banded jerk tapped Donnie's fist with a praising smirk as though he hadn't just been about to shove his other two brothers off the side of the building.

Raph yanked out his sais and hooked them around Leo's rope with the tines. "Move it Robin," he barked before leaping off their perch.

He heard Mikey scoff behind him and follow his lead. "Bro I'm _way_ cooler than Robin. Dude's got no sense of humor."

Raph did not acknowledge Mikey's comment. The moment he landed just inside the windowsill, he pushed past Donnie and Leo and shoved his sais into his belt.

Michelangelo zipped in last, leaping over the remaining foot of empty air to land silently on the windowsill and then flip into the room. Only he didn't quite stick the landing and stumbled forward into Raph's carapace, knocking them both to the floor. The explosive mutant turtle whirled around and elbowed his brother in the face. Michelangelo reacted with a spurt of anger and dared to hit his ill-tempered sibling in return. Soon they were tussling on the floor, punching and swiping at each other until hands grabbed the edge of Raph's shell and yanked him off of the orange-covered maggot.

"Raph!" Leo shouted in a hoarse whisper, tossing him across the room as Donatello helped Mikey off the floor.

"The little sidekick started it!" Raph shouted back, throwing all ideals of the 'silent ninja' out the window.

"_Side_kick?!" Mikey exclaimed.

"Would you shhhh!" the leader hissed. "What did I tell you ten_ seconds_ ago? Do you want to bring the whole alien armada in here?!"

Raph dusted off his plastron roughly. "As a matter of fact, I wouldn't mind," he snapped sarcastically.

Leo jabbed a warning finger at him. "_Don't_ make me regret bringing you along Raphael."

Raph's beak curled.

For some nameless reason, Leo's words felt like a cold splash of water dousing his fire. He glanced toward Mikey and Donnie who stood a safe distance away, waiting anxiously as their older brothers got out their pre-mission dispute. Donnie's hands were placed protectively on either of Mikey's shoulders as though ready to snatch him up in his arms and make a run for it at the first sign of a jeopardizing eruption.

Well Donnie was just being a grade-A Superman tonight wasn't he? Coming up with half the infiltration plan, disabling the Kraang's high-tech security system, successfully sneaking all three of his brothers into the TCRI building, and now protecting Mikey from big bad Raphie? And what were they here for again? To steal mutagen so that _Donnie_ could whip up a batch of retro-mutagen and solve all their problems with two three-fingered hands and a giant brain?

Raph swallowed down the sensation of total uselessness and reconstructed his glare, shooting it back toward Leo.

He pushed his brother's hand from his plastron in silence.

Leonardo, the ever patient master of focus and control, took a calming breath and let Raphael be Raphael. "Just keep it together until we get back to the lair at_ least_."

Raph made no comment, and Leonardo took the silence as he was meant to. He wordlessly signaled the other two and they followed their leader out into the hall, Raph bringing up the rear.

With all four tempers back in check, the turtles stealthy raced through the hallways of the enemy lair with all the precision of trained ninjas—stopping whenever their frontrunner struck a fist into the air before detaching himself from his team and rounding the corner to silently behead any alien guards. The "second in command," Master of Potions, Technology, and apparently Direction, mutely articulated to his older brother in which track they needed to sprint.

Raph kept his teeth together and retained an eye on his brother's backs, listening behind him for any sign of non-ninja turtle movement. He would straighten out this issue of Donnie's utter perfection when they returned home. Though he resented taking orders from _anyone_, he knew better than to challenge Leo's command during a highly volatile operation—even though he sometimes disregarded that knowledge anyway. He blamed Pride. But to the point, he was well aware that however much he didn't like being told what to do, Leo did have an uncanny talent for judging situations correctly. Meaning, so long as Raph bit his tongue and Mikey didn't push any physical _or_ emotional buttons, Leo would lead his team out of the TCRI building in one piece _and _with an armful of mutagen.

* * *

_*Leo's POV*_

His focus was indestructible, firm, like titanium, not even blades as sharp as his own could slice through it. He didn't have to keep reminding himself why he and his team were sneaking through the enemy's fortress; the crucial weight of this mission sat like a two-ton sphere of iron in his gut. Whatever it was motivating his brothers,_ he_ was doing this for Karai. The sooner they obtained the mutagen Donnie needed, the sooner the purple-banded prodigy could finish the retro-mutagen, and only then could Leo funnel his full attention on finding Splinter's daughter. They could and would do this quickly—failure was not an option.

He had three fairly proficient ninjas keeping pace with him, guarding his back and now following his every command. Sure Raph had put up a little bit of a fight a minute ago, but that was Raph. It was expected. In fact, if Leo ever made an order Raph _didn't_ complain about, _then_ he'd worry. It was just the function of his relationship with his hard-shelled, younger brother. What they had was unstable and absurd, but it worked at the best of times—and even occasionally at the worst of times. But, while Raphael didn't always have his head in the game, Leo never had to question his heart or his loyalty. Besides being a time-bomb just waiting to explode on anything that breathed wrong, Raph's grit for having Leo's back was the one thing the blue-banded leader could always count on. And that was important.

He had his muscle bringing up the rear, his brain steering the team, and Mikey. And those three were just enough—they always had been. Sure they disregarded his position as the leader sometimes, undermined what little authority he possessed and also his, mostly strained, attempts at molding his team into the perfect machine, but over the past year he'd learned—at an impressively overwhelming rate—that there was definitely nothing perfect whatsoever about his team, and that worked. That, in turn, was what made his brothers perfect for him and what made him perfect for his brothers. Besides, they had never been _just_ a team anyway.

"To your left," Donnie whispered, pointing toward a large doorway at the end of the hallway.

Leo nodded once then shot Raph and Mikey a signal. They followed Leo's lead, and the three of them crouched in ready positions on the left side of the door as Donatello stuck his tongue between his teeth and worked his lock-picking sorcery skills on the opposite side of the doorway.

Leo waited patiently, hands gripped tightly around his katanas posed to strike anything that wasn't green. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply to control his pulse, stretching his senses, listening for the movement of Kraang on the other side of the door, his younger brothers' scattered breathing, and the techno bleeping of the scanner Donnie had cracked into.

Five slow heartbeats skipped calmly by and then Leo opened his eyes the moment Donatello looked at him, two wire ends held skillfully at the ready in his oversized fingers. Leo never really understood how Donnie managed to work with such precision on delicate-looking pieces of wire and microscopic cells and flammable chemicals in breakable jars. But his always resourceful and never impatient younger brother never ceased to amaze him.

Leo looked back at Raph and Mikey who both shot him ready glances, then he turned his blue eyes back on the smarts of the team and nodded once, shuffling closer to the wall to make sure he and his brothers were out of immediate sight. Donnie touched the wire ends together and the door slid open with a computerized groan. And they waited.

The Kraang were there. He could sense them—standing in the room, staring at the door that seemed to have opened of its own accord, extraterrestrial weapons lackadaisically hovering in front of their alien brain stomachs. Leo watched as Donnie silently withdrew a shuriken, took a split second to calculate, and then flung the blade with a sharp flick of the wrist. It was a silver blur that Leo really couldn't even follow, but he was aware when it ricocheted off of the power conduits on the ceiling and then whizzed through the open doorway and met a Kraang droid with a cackle of electricity. A lump of metal hit the floor. There was a squishy pop and then a squeal followed by the always repulsive sight of a squidgy pink brain with tentacles and eyes scuttling across the floor in terror.

This raised the curiosity of the remaining Kraang droids and they slowly crept up to the doorway. The moment Leonardo caught a gleam of silver, he lashed out with his swords, taking out the first droid with a spur of electrical pink fluids. Michelangelo, in the same second, had used Leo's carapace as a springboard and leapt over him, snapping his chucks at two other Kraang while Raph pivoted around Leo's right side and drove the spire of his sai through the head of another.

Donnie was already inside, wielding his bo staff so expertly that it took out three droids at once, leaving him free to race to the cylindrical tank of mutagen glowing a fluorescent blue-green in the dead center of the room. Leo, Raph and Mikey, stabbed, decapitated, and forced down any droids that dared to get near enough to any of the four of them as Donnie did what Donnie does best. There were only a dozen or so Kraang clustered in the room, and they dropped quickly, hardly even before getting the chance to fire their weapons.

Donatello had assured his older brother that upon disabling the alarms he had also taken out the Kraang droid in the security room and rewired the cameras in case another android came in to look at the security feed; in which case, they would see nothing out of the usual. As time passed and no wave of reinforcements came, Leo became more and more confident in his brother's efficiency and quietly wondered to himself how on earth they'd ever do any of this stuff without Donnie.

"Raph, Mikey, guard the door," he ordered, sheathing his katanas.

Mikey vaulted over to the open doorway immediately, smiling like he'd just proven to the world how remarkable he was, nunchucks at the ready, pinned to his sides by his elbows as he animatedly began running his mouth about details of the fight that specifically made him a non-sidekick crime fighter. Raph didn't seem to be listening. He drifted to the doorway in no particular hurry, eyes glancing so quickly between Leo and Donnie that Leonardo almost didn't catch the glint in it. In fact, it was so faint, that it hardly registered at all.

The blue-banded turtle joined his brother in purple at the tank of ooze and peered down at the control panel of buttons and blinky dials. His mask creased as the mechanical logic of all this Kraang tech took a flying leap right over his head. Donnie was already pushing buttons in a seemingly specific pattern that was completely indecipherable to Leo, but he didn't doubt that Donnie knew what he was doing.

Sometimes it was a little bit frightening how smart his brother was. So much so that Leo often questioned whether or not it should be Donnie that was in charge rather than him. He tried to assure himself that technically, he _was_ a better strategist and Don occasionally tended to be so logical that abstract ideas completely escaped him, but there was no denying Donatello would probably be just as good a leader as any, were he given the chance.

Leo glanced over his shoulder to check on the other two. Mikey was running in place, motor-mouthing an entire philosophy that probably made no sense, which was what led to Raph leaning against the doorway in a closed-off posture, arms folded across his plastron, green eyes gazing up at the ceiling as though praying his soul out for patience. Leo found himself smirking slightly at the look. However brutish, mean, and irrational Raphael tended to be, there was something soft inside that shell of his and it revealed itself more often than Raph was probably aware.

"Got it," Donnie exclaimed as he tossed up his hands and took a step back, smiling slightly at the configuration of blinking lights and bleeping noises. Leo couldn't even guess what this pattern-less jumble of techno reactions looked like in Donatello's perspective. Probably something that made sense.

Don flashed a, slightly boastful but tender, grin at Leo then trotted to the opposite side of the room to some sort of a spinning rack that contained empty canisters. A metallic-y churning and whirring sound ensued as the rack began to rotate and the empty canisters did a three-sixty carousel turn, coming back around full of the temperamental blue-green substance. Leo smiled and patted Donnie's shoulder. He couldn't have loved the purple dork anymore just then.

"How many do we need?" Leo mumbled.

"As much as we can carry," Donnie answered, setting down the duffel bag he'd brought with him.

Leo helped him carefully yank the filled canisters off of the rack and slip them into the bag until it was bulging with so many cans that it might've been on the cusp of ripping down the middle.

"Alright," Leo sighed, standing as Donnie threw the strap of the bag over his shoulder and grabbed one more can for good measure. "Let's hit it guys," he hissed to Raph and Mikey.

The two in orange and red nodded, confirmed that the hall was clear, and then the four of them bolted, sprinting in the likeness very much the opposite of the stereotypical turtle. The "slow and steady" part of the race was long over; it was time to be the hare.

A sensation of surreal accomplishment settled upon Leo, so much so that he felt like he might lift off the floor if he ran any faster. Though they hadn't quite made it home-free just yet, Leo was amazed that his plan had actually played out perfectly this time. Of course he had anticipated the small scattering of Kraang along the hall and the herd of droids stationed in the mutagen room, but he had thought that somewhere along the way they would run into more aliens, unravel his carefully-planned operation and end up having to scatter—which was what usually happened. But it had all gone so flawlessly that…it was almost eerie.

But as they rounded the corner toward their infiltration point, they skidded to a halt upon coming face to face with a horde of Kraang droids that had gathered just outside the doorway they had intended to escape through. Leo heard Raph curse just as his own heart dropped into the pit of his stomach…Of course.

"Move it. Move it!" Leo shouted, immediately turning back the other way as vibrant flashes of pink lasers streaked the hallway.

He saw Donnie reach out and pound a button on the wall, and there was a loud metal clang as a steel barricade dropped between the four ninja turtles and the Kraang droids.

"How did you know that was there?" Leo asked, astounded.

Donnie shrugged as though it was nothing, turning to run alongside his brothers to find a new way out. "I saw it in their security plans. They've apparently done some major upgrading to the system since we came along."

Leo smiled and tried not to feel flattered by this information.

"Yeah okay," Raph spoke up. "But why are we running? We can take those stormtroopers, no problem."

"We're not going to risk it," Leo said collectedly as they sped around a corner, taking them down a hall of cells. Leo automatically glanced into the windows. The cells were empty.

"We can't afford to lose even a drop of this mutagen," Donnie explained. "I'm not even sure we have enough as it is…I should have grabbed another can," he mumbled, eyes scanning the ground.

"You know what, I don't actually remember asking you Donnie," Raph snapped.

Normally, Leo would have countered Raph's attitude, stepped up to defend his younger brother—or at the very least noticed that Raphael was being unreasonably harsh on Donnie, but it didn't register. In fact, the whole stretch of banter that continued after Raph's comment was completely lost.

Leo had stopped running. His eyes were wide and glued to the pink-filmed window of one of the cells. His fingers had gone cold, his breath short, and his limbs unnaturally unsteady. He stepped up to the door, placing one three-fingered hand against the cold steel, and stopped breathing entirely.

It couldn't be. But it was…Only it didn't make any sense. There were no scales, no visible fangs, no tail. She looked perfectly human, just exactly the way she'd looked before. Long legs, slim torso, black shozoku with plated armor, short, modish human hair, blonde in the back, black in the front, the loose strands lying peaceful and still across her pale cheek. She was asleep and…beautiful—like a Japanese incarnation of Snow White. But it _couldn't_ be.

For the longest weightless moment in a millisecond time span, the turtle's heart stopped beating.

"Karai?"


	8. Chapter 8

**So there's going to be a lot of jumping from one POV to another in the next couple of chapters. Let me know if it gets confusing. I wanted to make the whole "in-pursuit-of-Karai scene" all one long chapter, but decided against it. I'll have the next part up ASAP...**

* * *

His heart was in his throat, and the hallway had suddenly decided it would pursue a better lifestyle as a spinning tunnel. He tried to focus, tried to react quickly, make the right move, execute his actions as calmly and professionally as he normally did in conditions such as these, but something about this situation had his emotions suddenly beaming on the outside, whereas before he'd had them under check, lock and key. But now he was so suddenly overwhelmed, it didn't matter to him—_nothing_ did. His previous obligations did a flying belly flop out the window. He was now aware of one thing and one thing only, and that was getting Karai out of that cell.

As reluctant as he was to look away from her, he tore his gaze to the side and ripped the face of the keypad off its hinges. He'd seen the inside of one of these things before—the baffling mesh of various colored wires, the blinking lights, the matrix Kraang code, practically popping out at him in 3D as if to laughingly rub in his face the fact that he had no idea what he was even looking at. But it didn't matter. He'd done it before. He couldn't remember how and it had been a painstakingly slow process, but he would figure it out somehow. He had to.

* * *

"Yeah I'll be sure to think about that next time we steal mutagen from the Kraang," Raph sneered at Donatello as they ran down the hall.

His gangly brother had resigned to a face of quiet frustration. He had pressed his lips together to refrain from responding and stared straight ahead so as not to meet Raph's glare, clutching the bulging bag of mutagen like it would somehow save him from his older brother's haphazard insults.

Raph decided to put it on hold since Donnie was now giving him nothing to work with, and glanced over his shoulder, vaguely curious about Leonardo's sudden silence. Normally, he'd have received an earful from the protective older brother by now, whether they were in the midst of running for their lives or not. But when he looked in the general direction that he'd last remembered seeing that blue-banded tight-ass, there was no Leonardo to be found.

Raph skidded to a halt and whipped around—for half a second panicked that the Kraang had come up behind them without their noticing and swiped his brother up like he was one of their experiments to lock in a cell. But the steel barricade was still down—though, by the sound of it, the Kraang weren't far from having it open. Leonardo had stopped long down the hall, and was now staring at the intestines of one of the Kraang's stupid keypad contraptions that they had controlling the cell doors.

"Leo, what're you doing?!"

His bewildered bellow stopped the other two in their tracks and the three of them stared over at their leader as though he'd lost his mind.

They hardly had a five second grace period before loud, reverberating metal clanking ensued and the barricade lifted, giving permission to the army of Kraang droids that seemed to have grown since last the turtles had seen them.

"Turtle," said one of the Kraang in his monotone robot voice, directly speaking to Leo. "Do not open the door that leads to the cell which contains that which is called Karai."

Leonardo ignored them all so flawlessly, it was almost as if he hadn't heard a word. For Raph, he might as well not have heard it either for all he could understand of the Kraang's roundabout babble. But he was more an action kind of guy himself anyway.

He took off running straight for the alien horde, and he felt the presence of the younger two keeping close to his back. The Kraang raised their weapons and began firing, sending ribbons of pink light bouncing all over the hallway. The three active turtles dodged the lasers with impeccable swiftness. The only problem was Leo. He hadn't moved.

"Leonardo!" Raph shouted, that infamous fire immediately flaring up in his gut.

He hurled his sai down the hallway and it planted itself in the metallic skull of the droid that had been directly poised to shoot down the clueless "hero" in blue.

"Leo, what the shell are you doing? The Kraang are _shooting_ at you!"

Nothing. It was like his voice was bouncing off of an invisible force field.

But by the time he and his brothers made it down the hall and had begun to stomp on the Kraang like ants, it didn't matter. Raph was lost in a fury. He didn't understand what the heck Leonardo's problem was, but he would not let these alien drones take out his older brother while Leo was in a poorly-timed trance. He just had to keep bashing bots until the blue-banded dummy snapped out of it.

* * *

Lasers whizzed by him, missing his head by mere centimeters, just barely scraping across his shell. A film of sweat had broken out across his forehead. He felt so lightheaded that he feared he might pass out before he could get this stupid door open. Vaguely was he aware of the war being waged just behind his carapace, but the possibility of his brothers being in jeopardy never even crossed his mind. He had completely forgotten about them, about the plan, about the mutagen that Donnie—to Leo's obliviousness—was risking life and limb to hold onto. None of it mattered. _None_ of it mattered, because Karai was a mere sheet of metal away and he would not lose her this time.

But time was short; he could feel it slipping away, could feel his heartbeat ticking down the seconds, squeezing the air out of his lungs like time was some ginormous centripetal force pressing in on his carapace, filling his eardrums with his own pulse, turning his stomach with anxiety and making the world spin. His hands were trembling much too excessively. He could hardly hold the wires anymore.

So he stood and withdrew his katanas, and he hacked at the controls, praying they would not cause a lasting damage that kept Karai locked out of his reach forever. Teeth clenched, muscles tight—it was about five swipes in that there was a metallic hiss and then a rattle as the door jerked an inch and stopped, leaving just the sliver of a gap. That was enough for him.

He rushed to the door, shoved the blade of one katana through the gap and proceeded to pry it open. It was a resilient opponent, fighting back with a stance so solid that Leo's muscles rippled with the effort it took to force his way into the cell. He eventually dropped his katanas and used his hands, shoving his shoulder between the gap when it was wide enough.

A determined grunt of both strength and desperation rumbled through his throat and pushed its way through his teeth, but his strenuous cries were drowned by the clashing of metal and wood and the shrieking _pews_ of firing laser guns.

Finally, after one full-forced shove, the door caved and he stumbled into the cell. In an unknowing pant, he scooped up his katanas and returned them to his shell as he rushed up to his sleeping utsukushii. He gingerly brushed her hair away from her face and touched her cheek.

"Karai?" he said, his voice coming out now in more of a whisper.

His heart was beating so fiercely against his plastron it almost hurt. He shook her shoulder gently. All he wanted was for her eyes to flutter open, gaze upon him with golden irises, gleaming with healthy-human life, and for her cheeks to give away the hint of that relieved, straight-lined smile that thanked him in ways her voice could not. He just wanted her to be Karai—to be alive.

"Karai, wake up," he breathed, shaking her with more urgency. "We have to get you out of here. We have to go. Splinter's waiting for you."

Even now he couldn't bring himself to verbally admit that he too was waiting for her—had been waiting for her for a long time it seemed, long before she'd been mutated, long before she'd been told the truth about her father…He'd been waiting for her since the day they'd met and now he was so close—sickeningly close.

"Karai please," he begged. "_Please_ open your eyes."

Just as he began to lose his breath again, just as his shell began to tremble with panic, just as a torturous pressure began to close in on him—her eyes shot open. She moved so quickly that she became nothing more than a black and silver blur. The full force of her weight threw itself against him and his shell hit the wall on the opposite side of the room. Her hand was on his throat, squeezing it in a vice-like grip and her face was hardly an inch from his own, inhuman, luminous green eyes, with dark slits for pupils glaring viciously at him. He choked—half from shock, half from the grasp she had on his throat. He tugged at her arm feebly with both hands. Her strength was supernatural.

"Karai," he gasped. "It's—me."

She hissed in his face, revealing long, glittering fangs and a snake-like tongue.

He could've sworn this was a nightmare. He would've loved for it to have been. He didn't understand what was going on, and being completely frank with himself it was scaring him. He tugged on her arm desperately, as a tunnel of black entered his vision. He just barely got her fingers to budge.

"Karai please," he rasped. "It's _me_!"

Her face crinkled with pure hatred, and the sound that came out of her mouth was completely…_monstrous_, like the Karai he knew wasn't even there at all.

And then a blur of green plowed into her and she tumbled across the room. Leo's lungs were flooded with air so cold that it burned his throat. He coughed and choked and blearily shook his head to clear his vision and saw Raph reaching down to pull him to his feet. He allowed this, but neither of them said a word for they were both staring wide-eyed at inhuman Karai, absently backing toward the door as they watched her body shudder and shift, elongating and turning stark white. Glossy scales protracted from her skin, her legs melded together to become one giant tail, and her hands and face morphed into angular, silvery purple-streaked snake-heads.

"Holy shit," Raph gasped as Leo gazed on in horror, unknowingly clinging to his younger brother.

Mutant Karai uncurled her coils and rose up to her full height, which was terribly far above their own heads. Leo stared up at her, unsure whether to scream, cry, run or simply collapse. He again found himself unable to breathe.

Karai darted toward them and he found himself crashing into the wall as Raphael pushed him. Vaguely did he see his brother dive out of the way, as he was much too preoccupied watching Karai slither through the opened doorway with a speed that turned her into a simple streak of white. The sound of panicking Kraang and frantic laser shots came before her tail could even make it out of the cell, and for some reason it was this that slapped him back into reality—back into the realization that _that_ mutant was Karai and she was getting away.

"No, wait!" he shouted, shooting to his feet and out the door. "Karai!"

"Leo!" Raph's voice shouted after him.

He hardly recognized it.


	9. Chapter 9

This was insanity. Protecting the mutagen was like sheltering a human baby from exploding in the middle of a gunfight, only he was forced to run headlong into battle despite the innocent life at stake. During any other mission he wouldn't normally concern himself with taking such care of mutagen, just so long as neither he nor his brothers were exposed to it, but they needed it this time. Distorted human lives were counting on this, and yet he was tumbling through the hallway with a bag of breakable glass containing a highly volatile chemical. If even one of the canisters shattered, not only would he be losing precious resources that cost nearly more than it was worth, but seeing as the canisters were in a bag strapped to his own shoulder, he was very at risk of exposing himself to the unpredictable substance. God knew he didn't want to be some dysfunctional super mutant.

Distractedly, he found himself thinking about the last living organism he'd come in contact with. Seeing as ninety-five percent of his life revolved around machines, it was rather difficult to recall. He supposed the last living thing he'd touched was Leo—or rather, Leo had touched him. How would that work? Would he morph into some super ultra-mega mutant turtle with katana blades sprouting out of his shell, and an extra pair of blue eyes popping out of his forehead, three times his normal size which was already awkwardly taller than the rest of his brothers? He shuddered with frustration without missing a stride in his fight with the Kraang, fluidly whirling his staff around like he actually practiced twenty-four-seven. (Not true of course, he spent more time in his lab than he did training, but he supposed not all of them needed to be as proficient as Leo or as excessive as Raph.)

If only he knew the exact properties the mutagen carried…If only he actually _knew_ how it worked, why it chose to take the forms it did. It seemed like that little bit of information would make his life ten times easier. But being a teenage mutant ninja turtle seemed to call for throwing 'easy' out the window. Nothing was allowed to be simple, or straightforward, or completely clear…Well, maybe not to anyone but Mikey.

Speaking of, it seemed as though he and his younger brother had been left to ward off the Kraang alone. Leo had disappeared in the cell he'd desperately shouldered his way into, and Donnie had only caught a vague glimpse of Raph slipping into the cell as well just a second ago.

If he'd heard it correctly, Karai was in there. But even as eager as he was to find her, the last time he'd checked she was a mutant snake that appeared to be less than conscious of her own actions. As far as he could understand she didn't know who she was, _what_ she was, or, most importantly, who was on her side.

He'd spent hours thinking of the best way to approach her when and if they were ever to find her. She would be hostile, aggressive, confused—it was a situation he knew called for extreme caution. So if that _was_ mutated Karai in the cell, then there was probably good reason for the Kraang's earlier objection to her being released—more than just their evil alien kidnapping tendencies.

He whirled his staff and rammed it against the Kraang bot charging him, creating a domino effect that toppled the three droids coming up behind it. A bot to his right began firing at him and he attempted to dodge the lasers, but his foot found faulty stability on a scuttling alien brain and he slipped backward. He used his other foot to propel him upward and used his palm to flip himself over in a backward arc before his shell could crush the containers of ooze against the floor. Mikey leapt into the picture, posing briefly like a short, green Spiderman and sent a flurry of chucks on the bot that had been shooting at Donatello.

"I got you D!" He released a slur of karate screams and sent the droid flying with a kick. It crashed into its fellow bots, but of course there always seemed to be more spilling out of the seams in the walls.

Mikey and Donnie backed slowly toward the cell door through which their brothers had disappeared, panting, weapons at the ready.

"Hey Donnie, this might not be the best time but…I totally rigged a bucket of sewage to slime you the next time you open your lab door."

Donnie shot a glare at his orange-banded brother. "What?"

"I just thought I'd let you know in case we get our shells whipped but somehow make it home. I think I'd feel kinda bad if you got sludged while you were limping into your lab."

"Mikey…" He didn't have any words. Michelangelo's talent for bringing up completely irrelevant topics at the worst possible moments was unparalleled.

"That's so—_juvenile_."

Mikey cracked a grin. "Thanks."

Donnie just had time to roll his eyes before something burst out of the cell just behind them, whipping Mikey in the shell and sending him skidding into the midst of the Kraang army. But the robots were suddenly very uninterested in the turtles. Donnie dove forward as they began shooting up at the thing that had emerged and he glance up in time to see a streak of white plowing down the hallway, barreling through any Kraang that attempted to stop it…That was Karai alright.

A turtle-like flash flew by just as quickly.

"No, wait! Karai!"

"Leo!" Raph bellowed, coming out of the cell two seconds later.

Neither of them spared the younger two a glance.

At this point, the Kraang had begun a pursuit of the snake and the two turtles following her, leaving Mikey and Donnie curled up and panting on the floor—utterly bewildered and disoriented. Donnie snapped out of it first and jumped to his feet, running back to grab his brother.

"Come on!" He yanked Mikey to his feet and the two of them bolted after the train of mutants and aliens making a break for the exit.

"Does Karai look a bit pale to you?" Mikey shouted as they ran.

Donnie gritted his teeth and slapped the back of his head without missing a step. "This is no time to joke around Mikey!"

"Ow! I'm just sayin'."

They were the last to burst out of the building and make a hard left down the no-longer-empty street. The midnight air had been warm before, but now it seemed unbreathably thick with chaos as an entire fleet of…_things_ carelessly stampeded down the streets of the human world in pursuit of one stark-white, giant snake-girl.

Sometimes the realities of their life seemed inconceivably ludicrous when he took the time to think about it.

Mikey gasped. "Dude…" He nudged Donnie, and the purple-masked turtle followed his brother's eyes skyward toward the nimble black shadows moving along the rooftops.

"Footbots!"

His eyes scanned the buildings until they landed on a massive tiger-like figure sprinting like a jungle cat on two legs. "They must have been scouting out the Kraang," he exclaimed, adding two and two together, his mind working like a live circuit board. "They've been looking for Karai too. They're—"

His train of thought was cut off with a gasp as something plowed into his shoulders with a bruising grip and lifted him off the ground. Mikey squealed.

"Donnie!"

He flung out his kasurigama chain two seconds too late. Donnie felt the metal links scrape by the bottom of his foot before they were overruled by gravity.

His heart beat hard behind his plastron as he breathlessly watched the ground and his brother shrink beneath him, stretching away like speckled black taffy. He clasped at whatever was holding him, terrified of the elongating drop. He looked up into the giant, reflective orbs on Baxter Stockman's fly face and saw thousands of broken-up, little wide-eyed Donnie faces looking back at him.

He writhed, suddenly not caring how far he fell. Baxter's appearance was just as revolting as it had ever been. He felt contaminated with a million different diseases just by being touched by him.

"Get off of me!" he shouted—pretty audaciously considering he was now suspended about a hundred feet above the ground.

"Z-z-z-z-z'your funeral," Stockman buzzed. He released his grip and Donnie's stomach immediately jumped into his throat as he was yanked down by an invisible force and plummeted toward the cement at a startling speed.

As much as he knew he'd blatantly asked for it, a petrified scream burst from his lungs and did not stop until his body lurched as Stockman caught him by the foot about twenty feet from hitting the ground and shot back up again. The bag of mutagen slipped past Donnie's dangling arms and he caught it by the strap just before it tumbled to the street. He again watched the world shrink at an alarming rate and forced himself not to puke at the dizzying height.

His eyes scanned the blur of blacks, blues, and greys, dotted with white and gold lights, whisking by in conjunction with Stockman's irregular flight pattern. He caught a glimpse of a building that was fast approaching and just tall enough, and yanked a throwing star out of his belt. He stuck his tongue between his teeth and chucked the star with all the force he could manage to get it to fly upward and graze one of Stockman's giant eyes. The mutant fly shrieked and the grip on Donatello's ankle immediately vanished. He plummeted again, but this time he refrained from panicking.

Instead he flung out the duffle bag just in time for the strap to catch around a flag pole, and his body again jerked with the sudden loss of momentum, nearly dislocating his shoulder. He swung precariously five stories above ground, clutching the bag with his life, hyperventilating, and trying not to look down. His trembling arms prevented him from lifting himself up so he consented to simply hang there until his heart stopped beating like a chunk of ice against his ribs.

Apparently, he waited too long.

After a moment of breathlessness, the duffle bag began to float upward, dragging him with it, slow and pending, like an elevator, and stopped when he was eye-level with the hulking wolf, chiseled with an inverted skeleton that was Rahzar.

"Well well," he growled in his bubbling, deep-throated snarl. "Just the turtle we were looking for."

Donnie didn't care to ask _why_ to Rahzar's rumbling statement, nor did he spare a glance for the giant, beet-red fish on mechanical legs hovering just behind the wolf. He yanked out a shuriken and sliced through the straps of the duffle bag without hesitation. The threads snapped easily and he plummeted a third time, only in this instance he knew he'd meet pavement. He clenched his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut, clutching the bag close to his chest.

It took a sickeningly long, weightless moment, but his shell finally hit the ground with a crack that snatched his breath out of his chest.

He choked, and for five full seconds, he could neither move nor breathe. Then he felt himself slowly rolling over on his side, his shell rattling with short, airless breaths. All he could really do was hug the bag to his chest as small painful moans escaped his lungs.

While he was temporarily paralyzed, he went into a mental inspection of his bones, skin, and organs, assessing the damages done. Thankfully, his body seemed to be more in shock than anything. His shell might've procured a nice crack but that would heal itself. Other than that, though he was in pain, he seemed fine.

Never in his life had he been more grateful to be a turtle.

As he slowly regained his ability to breathe, he opened his eyes and saw a dark figure darting toward him. It was slow-going, but he forced his limbs to come alive again and scrambled to his feet, stumbling down the sidewalk as quickly as he could make himself move, but he knew his efforts were futile.

He was again snatched up by Stockman's uneven grip, but this time, as he was jerked toward the roof of the building he'd just fallen from, he lost his hold on the duffle bag. His heart shot into his throat.

"No!" he screamed, uselessly reaching out for it.

He watched the night's effort fall toward the ground, but just before it hit he caught a glimpse of his orange-banded younger brother diving for the bag and flipping flawlessly back onto his feet, turning his gaze up toward Donnie who breathed out in relief and stuck his thumb up. He just caught Mikey's grin before the little turtle disappeared.

Then Donnie was dropped unceremoniously at Rahzar's feet.

"One terrapin genius, as-s-s-s ordered," Stockman-fly stuttered.

Donatello didn't want to know…didn't even want to_ think_ about it. His body was still aching too furiously to concentrate anyway. He savored his strength and waited, lying on the rooftop with his cheek to the warm, gravelly cement, storing their conversation away to dissect later.

"Beautiful," said Rahzar, planting a giant, clawed foot on Donnie's shell, pressing the oxygen out of him. "Let's see Tigerclaw top _that_."

"House cat," Fishface mumbled in his thick accent. "And the Shredder thinks he's so perfect." Metallic stomping ensued as the giant fish walked toward the edge of the building. "I'd like to see him fall flat on his face._ I_ should've been the one in charge of catching Karai. Instead I get stuck with you two hideous freaks and this pathetic turtle. He's not even a threat. Out of the four of them he's probably the_ least_ aggressive. This is so degrading."

_Not a threat?!_ Donnie thought to himself, wiggling beneath Rahzar's foot. He couldn't wait to spear that big-faced fish-mouth in the fin.

"You insulted him Fishface," Rahzar cooed almost with pity, squashing Donnie against the cement.

"Ey! I_ told_ you not to call me that," Fishface hissed. "Accepting nicknames from that cheeky little reptile. How would you like it if I called you Rahzar?"

"You _do_ call me Rahzar…And anyway, I kind of like it. It's way better than Fishface anyway—or Stockman-fly."

Xever growled and Baxter buzzed indignantly. "Regardless of child-given titles-s-s-s, I was-s-s-s the one who did all the work here."

Both Bradford and Xever scoffed. "_You_?" Rahzar growled.

"How would you like it if I sliced off your wings and fed them to the cat?"

"Face it, I've got brains-s-s-s _and_ I can fly. Z-z-z-z-z'more than you two imbec-c-c-ciles can do put to together."

"Oh yeah?" Rahzar taunted. "If you've got brains then why does Master Shredder need this turtle?"

"He's-s-s-s mistaken."

"Really?" Fishface sang in interested tones. "And was the turtle's retro-mutagen a mistake too? You know the one that he whipped up like a batch of pancakes probably from some infested sewer tunnel in the darkest hole of the city while you had an entire laboratory and funding from the Shredder to produce nothing?"

Donatello's heart was thumping fast against his ribs.

"A chemical mis-s-s-shap no doubt."

"Pah," Xever scoffed. "You're just jealous."

"Jealous?!"

"That's what I said."

"Jealous-s-s-s like you are of the cat?"

"Ey! Say that to my face you shit-eater."

"Quiet you two!" Rahzar barked. "Let's just take _this_ back to Master Shredder. We've wasted enough time as it is."

He picked Donatello up off the cement by his head as though he was some kind of Raggedy Ann doll or a suspiciously over-ripe cantaloupe that he was about to sniff, holding him close to his werewolf-like face.

"If you cooperate, we won't rip off that shell of yours," he growled.

Donnie gritted his teeth and discreetly reached behind his shell. He pressed the button on his bo staff and the naginata blade shot out, straight into Rahzar's exposed wrist. Bradford yelped and dropped him, splattering his carapace with nearly-black blood as Donnie yanked his staff out of the wolf's arm. Fishface and Stockman-fly converged on him.

Donnie lashed out his blade, just barely skimming Xever's scales and whipped a high kick up at Stockman that sent the fly in a clear arc across the building. He used his staff to pole vault over Xever and whirled it around as soon as he landed, thwacking the fish's stomach. His metal feet scraped the cement as he skidded backward, nearly toppling off the edge of the building.

An enraged roar came from Donnie's right and he ran at Rahzar's one-wolf stampede, ducking at the last minute to slide on his shell beneath Bradford's legs and punt him in the back with his staff. Rahzar stumbled forward and crashed into a newly-balanced Fishface.

Donnie turned and ran, aiming for the adjacent building. He leapt over the gap and was tackled midair and forced to crash-land on the second rooftop with an over exaggerated dog on his shell. He slipped a throwing star out of his belt and stabbed it into Rahzar's side. He howled and Donnie rolled out of his slackened grip, still clutching the star, and threw it in Fishface's direction. It lodged itself in one of his metallic joints and he crippled, face-planting into the cement. Donnie launched his feet toward the approaching werewolf, but Rahzar grasped his ankles and flung him across the roof. His shell hit the door to the stairwell leading into the building, and shocks of pain sprouted throughout his back, all emitting from where he suspected the crack was.

He propped himself on his side, his weight on his left arm and knee, prepared to use his remaining strength to drive his naginata blade through Rahzar's stomach if he got too close. Bradford advanced on him slowly, dragging his clawed fingers against the cemented rooftop, a deep, vicious growl rattling from his ribbed chest. Donnie tried to even his breathing and tightened his grip on his staff. A tickle of sweat dripped down his face.

Rahzar lifted a large, sharp hand to strike, and Donnie panicked as his twitching muscles seized and he realized he couldn't kill this thing. His heart stopped.

"Booyakasha!"

A small but precisely aimed force struck Rahzar in the back and Donnie flinched as the giant wolf fell toward him. But the door was in the way and Rahzar ended up smacking it with his face. He was promptly jerked back by a chain and Mikey took a flying leap over his sharp figure, kicking his head back with his heel in midair. He landed on one foot, then whirled the other around without a break in motion and punted Rahzar in the stomach. At the same moment, Donnie noticed Fishface hobbling toward his younger brother and threw another star, disabling his other leg and again introducing his face to the cement.

Mikey performed a nimble backflip and landed directly in front of his brother. The purple-banded turtle just caught a glimpse of Rahzar pushing himself to his feet to charge, and then there was a flash of black and purple smoke.


	10. Chapter 10

He felt a scorching beam of hot pink light whiz by his ear and ducked his head lower as he ran, biting his bottom lip against the stream of curses threatening to blow up like Pop Rocks on his tongue. As much as his muscles ached to whirl around and unleash a sai-stabbing fury on the Kraang bots behind him, he knew if he did he'd lose the striped blue trail of his fearless—or what was more, _oblivious_—leader.

Already, he and the throng of alien robots were falling significantly behind in the chase. Karai was a mere pearl-colored smudge against the blackened pavement and mass of shadows crisscrossing along the cemented city. Leonardo, cutting through the arrogant New York night-wash with his torso bowed and his arms skimming the atmosphere behind him, though losing ground himself, was still a good thirty yards ahead of the rest of the game.

Raph had given up trying to threaten his brother to a halt when his voice had cracked on the last bellow. Despite the leader's sharpened sense of hearing, he was too far ahead to mind Raph's yelling and he'd already been doing a fabulous job of ignoring it anyway. Now Raph just hoped he'd either pick up some speed somewhere, or the leading mutants would tire and slow down; so far, neither one of these odds seemed very promising.

He had also given up on slowing down the Kraang. They weren't interested in him or his brother now that an apparently greater threat had been released. But the pathetic alien front was no closer to catching Karai than Raphael. Despite the fact that they were terrible shots and had apparently screwed depth perception and kept skimming lasers by his shell rather than getting anywhere near Karai with their assault, he wasn't worried about them. It was the scattered black mass of Footbots leaping from roof to roof led by the feline silhouette of Tigerclaw, which he'd noticed hardly thirty seconds after bursting out of the TCRI building, that had his blood boiling less with anger and more on a double dose of adrenaline, especially since Leonardo seemed astoundingly ignorant to the third party of pursuers now tailing Karai.

"Kraang must do the apprehending of the one that is known as Karai before the one that is known as Karai is apprehended by the ones who are not Kraang" droned a bot not far behind the red-banded turtle.

"Agreed Kraang," responded another. "But it would appear that Kraang's body does not contain the appropriate speed that is needed of Kraang to do the apprehending of the one that is called Karai."

"Kraang also agrees with Kraang, this is that which they call problematic."

Raph gritted his teeth and chucked a shuriken over his shoulder. It guiltlessly decapitated one of the speaking bots, and though the clatter of metal hitting the pavement jumped on top of the cacophony of lasers and metallic footfalls, the squeal of an alien brain was lost in the night.

"Why doesn't Kraang just shut up and bow out?" he challenged the other bot that had been conversing with its now disabled jogging buddy.

"The turtle that is the turtle which is known as Raphael is that which they call insolent."

He chucked another shuriken and the second bot was nearly trampled by his Kraang kin.

"Well the one called alien shit is that which they call annoying as hell."

"The ones called the turtles should, as you have called 'bow out' before the turtles are turtles that are permanently eliminated. The one called Karai shall be captured by Kraang," threatened yet another bot.

These guys were like giant silver ants that had claimed New York as their own personal mound. They were everywhere.

"Bite me," Raph spat back.

"Kraang does not follow the orders which are orders that come from the ones who are called turtles. And Kraang does not enjoy the taste of that which is known as a delicacy."

Raph planted his heels in the asphalt and whipped his fist around in time to drive his sai into the eye socket of the bot that had spoken. "How's that for a delicacy you C3PO knockoff?"

A flurry of hot pink ribbons suddenly blew to the right and began attacking him, biting his skin with small alien burns all over his arms and legs, grazing across his shell and nipping his cheeks and the crown of his head. He released his inner rage monster and buried his sais in the metal skulls of Kraang bots that dropped at his feet faster than he could count them.

They were even as easy to take a boot to as a colony of ants, but every time he cut one down another took its place and soon the block was crawling with squealing pink blobs. A heap of metal bodies began to pile up at his ankles, giving him less room to maneuver and more things to trip on. He leapt high onto the shoulders of one Kraang and wrenched its neck clean off of its body, flung the head at another droid, and flattened a third as he jumped off of the fallen.

A rosy flash did a little more than graze by the rim of his shell and he could feel his entire carapace shutter as the laser burned an inch-long V-shape out of his hardened exterior, leaving two seconds of wispy smoke in its wake. His growl was lost in the sound of crumpling metal and electrical popping as he pounced on the bot that had shot him and shredded it apart with his sais.

The remaining Kraang, in turn, amassed on him and he flailed his limbs to buck them off, but the pile-on only grew. His thrashing appendages were snatched up by cold metal fingers and forced to be still.

Through the muddled configuration of metallic body parts, he could no longer distinguish what arm or head belong to what bot, but one of them positioned the barrel of its laser gun against his plastron. Raph's muscles quivered with strain and he gritted his teeth.

Before the shot was fired, however, his ear distinctly picked up the echoes of high-pitched yipping and then the gun was gone with a crash of metal on metal and blurs of black plowed into the pile of Kraang that had wrestled him to the ground.

As soon as one arm was free his sliced the rest of his way out of the heap and stumbled back on his feet, for a moment just staring at the scene before him with a perplexedly furrowed brow and a heaving chest, the grip on his sais a little less concentrated.

He was surrounded by metallic figures of black and silver, butting robotic heads, quite literally, with one another as the Footbots fledged a full frontal attack on the Kraang. Squidgy, pink aliens popped out of their metallic bodies and took off squealing at triple the speed they had when it was just Raph's one-man front against the alien droids. The Foot wielded their extra appendages and extensive arsenal of ninja weapons like they were attacking an overgrown field of wheat—and the grains were practically bowing before the blows. The steady horizontal rain of lasers became more of a drizzle, and soon Raph was witnessing whole Kraang bots retreating down the street.

For a full twenty seconds he stood there, untouched, witnessing a robot massacre with his arms hanging limp by his sides and his head titled in slight disbelief…Until he was rammed in the back and his plastron struck the black pavement. He whirled around, growling, and faced a trio of Footbots that were standing at the ready, towering over him, armed with more weapons than anything with less than four hands could rightly brandish.

He launched himself to his feet, kicking down the Foot in the middle, and ducked immediately as the other two launched directly aimed strikes for his head. One of the bot's blades sank into the chest of the other. He leapt with a whirling kick that caught the standing Footbot in the back of the neck, and stomped it into the ground with his heel. Without missing a beat, he snatched a sword out of the bot's hand and ran it through the titanium stomach of the middle bot that had just gotten back on its feet.

Five heads snapped in his direction, eyes flashing red as low robotic drones reverberated through the shadows. He ran and was pursued by a chorus of disjointed yipping. It was now black steel stars and shuriken that whizzed by his head and this time the assailants had better aim. He sprinted in a haphazard, completely aimless pattern, and yet still managed to get a throwing star lodged in his shell.

He was starting to break a sweat now. While the Kraang weren't exactly martial arts masters, their quantity had nearly overwhelmed his quality, and now that they were out of the game, the third party had somewhat of both…He was just one turtle. And again, as much as he'd like to believe he was stronger, faster, and ten times more skilled than reality held him accountable for, there _was_ a reason he was part of a team.

His green eyes darted around the dappled streets of the same neighborhood he and his brothers had practically taken guardianship of but there were no mutant turtles besides himself to be found. He glanced behind him quickly and his gaze met nothing but robot ninjas chucking shuriken at his head. Vaguely, in the back of his mind, had he been aware that he was giving up his sights on Leo when he had engaged the Kraang, but where the shell were Donnie and Mikey?

He stuttered a step as the network of nerves running up and down his leg spazed just long enough for the Footbots tailing him to converge on him like flies to a picnic table. Multiple hands grabbed at his limbs but he did not allow himself to be dragged to the ground this time.

He thrust his spire into the gut of the ninja directly in front of him and held his breath for the whole ten seconds it took for a film of reddened rage to cast the city in bloody shadows as he sliced and stabbed through the heads, stomachs, and limbs of the remaining robots. It wasn't until the last one dropped - its eyes blackening and leaving behind a cold shell of mutilated alloy - that he unhitched his jaw and started breathing again, standing for a moment over the small pile of lifeless droids as his plastron heaved and beads of sweat soaked into his mask.

His emerald eyes swiveled around the empty street, absorbing the silent black in the air and the thinness of a sparse atmosphere. And it remained just that—empty.

He sucked in a large breath and let it out slowly, wiping his glistening brow with his bandaged wrist. He stuck his sais in his belt and kicked a lifeless Footbot out of his way as he marched toward the nearest alley, hopped up, and latched onto the bottom rung of a steel ladder hanging from the fire escape suspended about ten feet above the trash-strewn nook.

There was a slightly stronger breeze leaping across the rooftops that tugged on the tails of his mask and cooled his stinging skin. He rolled his shoulder back a few times as his eyes scanned the skyline for movement, and his ears honed on the uncharacteristic silence of the city. His stomach roiled uncomfortably, and he attempted to shake the growing anxiety from the tips of his fingers, tempted to withdraw his sais again just to have some security in his hands, to feel like he knew what he was doing, that he wasn't at a loss, that he hadn't lost track of all _three_ of his brothers.

He thought about shouting out to them but second guessed the notion just before his older brother's name could bellow past his lips. His voice would just attract more unwanted attention.

It was always in the after-the-fact moments that he started to feel the exhaustion in his limbs, as they quivered with the attempt to rejuvenate themselves without aid of water or rest, and the full hindrance of whatever injuries he'd managed to acquire. He wasn't exactly up to fighting off another horde of robots by himself.

Usually by this time, he and his brothers would have made it home, sometimes even before the pain started to set in. It wasn't_ too_ often that they were unintentionally separated like this and that was because Leo usually had his head on straight and knew how to keep the team converged in one place, even if that one place tended to jump around. But tonight…Tonight Leo's head had launched itself into outer space in a matter of seconds. They could've been home half an hour ago, but no. The supposed "leader" had to pull a Mikey and screw the whole mission by completely dismissing their entire plan. What was the point of even making a plan to begin with?

Raph's eyes darted to the left as he caught a blurred spot of orange. He squinted about three blocks down his ten o'clock and saw Tigerclaw skimming the skies, a blue flame flaring about where his tail should have been.

Raphael clenched his fists and ran, forcing his limbs to reawaken and remain alert as he leapt clear across alleyways until he was running parallel with the floating, mutant tiger and could make out three figures of black keeping pace with the giant jungle cat.

The red-banded warrior extracted his sais.

In his one full year of experience hopping buildings, he had learned that it was better to simply not think before making a jump. The best way to clear an extended hurdle was just to go for it. So, with a running start, he launched himself across the street, eyes on the face of his target, and drove his sais into the bricks of the adjacent building before gravity won out.

His arms shook with excessive adrenaline and he forced himself to pause and breathe for a moment, reign in his pulse, and check to make sure his stomach was still with him before he climbed up the face of the building and resumed jumping effortlessly across alleyways.

Tigerclaw was directly at his twelve o'clock now, close, but not so much that Raph's silent sprinting could be detected just yet. The three Footbots leapt down into an alley and Raph followed their black arc with his eyes and caught a glimpse of something white. He ran closer along the edge of the building and saw both Karai's band of pearly scales and Leo's katana-donned shell about ten yards behind her, running along the street way.

Raphael pushing his legs harder, taking each leap across the alleys a little more sloppily. He wasn't going for perfection now though. He was just aiming to get to his brother before the imitation ninjas or the cat did.

After one particularly wide gap gave him a noisy landing, Tigerclaw snapped his giant cat head over his shoulder and his deep guttural growl seemed to make the entire atmosphere tremble.

"Footbots!" he shouted.

But Raph had already gotten himself into position. He dove into the alley ahead, kicking off the wall on his way down to lessen the weight of his landing, and shot out into the street, placing himself directly between the advancing Footbots and his brother. Their yipping became excited, like a pack of hyena cubs that had just been given something juicy to chase, making the air itself coil with the height of their pitchy laughter.

They advanced on him quickly, but it took only two high-placed kicks and four inches of lost ground to send one bot crashing into another before he turned back to sprinting after his brother just in time to duck to the side as a throwing star whistled past and struck a stop sign. He sensed Tigerclaw's hovering presence drawing near and looked up to see him gliding overhead, cat-eyes glinting with dark determination and narrowed on the slithering white mutant up ahead.

Raph's head snapped to the left as he heard the growl of an engine—the kind that powered eighteen-wheeled semis that hazardously barreled down narrow streets, always in a hurry to make its designated drop and be on its way, careless of any smaller vehicles, pedestrians, dogs, cats, escaped zoo animals, or mutant turtles and snakes that might happen upon its predetermined path.

The turtle in red glanced up at the intersection that he, Leo, Karai, and the tagalong Footbot were all about to spear through. The flood of white-yellow headlights had already spilled across the black asphalt. Karai's scales reflected the manmade beams in glittering ripples of silver and purple, and a rousing, deep-bellied honk shook the air, drowning Raph's voice as he shouted out his brother's name.

Karai would make it. Leonardo would not.


	11. Chapter 11

It was like sprinting miles down a black tunnel with dimensions specifically tailored to accommodate him and his katanas only. The air was thin and cold and made his chest tighten underneath his plastron and his skin bubble up with goosebumps and the tips of his fingers go numb with a loss of circulation. His eyes never adjusted to the black walls; he was aware of nothing outside of the tunnel and its mocking echoes of his tempered breathing and working pulse accept for the brilliantly white archway growing closer and closer but never near enough to reach out and touch.

After chasing her throughout half the city, his exhaustion had distorted into numbness—muscle memory. His body simply knew that it had to keep moving and so it did, bandaged feet silently pounding the ground at a speed no turtle had ever been witnessed traveling.

He wondered where she was going, if she was just leading him in angular circles to expend his muscles and strain his lungs until he eventually gave in and conceded to let her free…But he wasn't going to do that. He couldn't. The last time he had watched her disappear—becoming nothing more than another mysterious accessory in this estranged city that was already bursting at the seams with oddities—he had not _only_ placed an incomprehensible weight of shame on himself, but upon looking up to his father that night he'd seen nothing but raw pain and disappointment.

He had failed to save Karai, failed to prevent her from being submerged in a vat of capricious mutagen when he had been the only one close enough to stop it, failed to keep her from slipping away after the fact, failed to even stop her from leaving the lair in the first place—and this whole chain-reaction of disasters was what he'd seen reflected in his Sensei's eyes that night. Splinter had lost his daughter again and it was because of him—because of Leonardo's inability to handle the situation in such a way that a leader should be able to. He could not and would not return home empty-handed. He couldn't look his father in the eye and tell him that he had personally let Karai slip away _again_.

What he would do with her and how they'd get her back home once she was safely in his arms again, at the moment, was unimportant. There was no strategy on this one. His sole objective was to run and retrieve, and he would not allow himself to quit until this was accomplished.

He kept his blue eyes narrowed on her snowy scales, occasionally glistening with hues of purple and silver beneath the city lights. The muscles in his legs were burning but he pushed them to run faster, to be strong and unyielding. If he'd learned anything from eleven long years of ninjutsu training, it was that his body was always capable of more than it let on. However much it whined and ached and burned and hissed at him with contempt, there was always more for it to give, and he was always one to challenge it in giving more.

Despite the creeping exhaustion, he forced himself to breathe in a regular pattern—in through his nose, out through his mouth, slow, steady, concentrated, and not too deep. Of his brothers, he had been the first to fully grasp breathing techniques in such a way that kept his body fully rejuvenated, so that he could push himself longer. Of course, he was always the one that spent extra hours meditating with his sensei, being carefully studious of the master's every inhale and exhale, precisely executing his sensei's own techniques until he mastered them himself, practicing the complicated art of retaining a patient and controlled demeanor. He hadn't quite perfected it yet, but he was determined to achieve the same level of endurance that his father had, and he wasn't about to give that up now.

And so the distance between him and the bright white archway of the end of that tunnel continued to diminish. He was so close now that he could actually make out each individual scale rippling down her back. He gritted his teeth and reached out, his green skin illuminated by a white-yellow light that bounced off of her reptilian skin and flashed in his eyes. He heard the vague echo of something loud, hulking, and close, but it didn't matter because Karai was mere inches from his fingertips now. One strong lunge and he would have her.

Just as he bent his knees to propel himself forward, he was rammed in the back with a crack of shell on shell that made his ears ring, arms clamped around his torso, and his fingers just brushed the end of Karai's tail as he hit the ground with a breath-snatching impact and skimmed across the pavement with an extra weight on his shell that eventually pinned him to the sidewalk.

It was like being slapped out of a dream, only to realize that reality was much more forbidding and dark. The tunnel walls vanished and allowed a cacophony of noises and a multitude of shades to render him deaf and blind. There was a shell-rattling honk of a semi blazing by and shattering a Footbot to pieces, sending shards of metal in every direction. There was a war of man-made lights and shadows crossing paths along the entire block, illuminating the catlike figure of Tigerclaw gliding overhead and obscuring the beam of white that had been the end of his tunnel. He watched with wide, burning blue eyes as the very tip of the same tail he'd just had his hand on disappeared into the shadows.

"Karai, no!"

He wasn't breathing regularly anymore; in fact, if his oxygen intake was cut any shorter he'd sure as pass out. He felt that dreaded failure instantly converge on him like a fleet of Footbots he was expected to ward off alone, and he immediately tried to run from it, pushing the weight off of his carapace and jumping to his feet. He bolted toward the alley down which both Karai and Tigerclaw had just vanished.

There was nothing there—mere shadows, a couple of rats, and a sickly dumpster that was hacking its contents onto the cement already plagued with bits of broken glass.

His throat caved in on itself and his head shook without permission.

"No."

The word passed his lips in a denying choke, barely making itself known even to him. He ran into the alley and searched every corner, grinding the glass underfoot and sending the rats scattering. He jumped up onto the fire escape and darted to the top, nearly tripping over the ledge of the building when he broke the surface. He turned in circles—the oxygen thin in his heaving chest—and saw nothing but dark, clear, unsuspecting rooftops.

"No…No!"

His body turned in aimless circles for a moment, nearly losing him his footing, then it jumped down into the alley again, landing in the infested dumpster. He began throwing trash around, peppering the alley with take-out boxes, and shredded papers, plastic bags, Styrofoam coffee cups, an old boot, a baby doll head, rotting fruits and un-namable objects that had gathered a coating of slime and dead flies. He didn't know what he was looking for; only that he wasn't finding it.

"Leo…"

He heard his name, but it grazed off his eardrums like the wind on the back of his head.

A flare of anger set his chest alight and he rammed his foot at the side of the dumpster, sending an echo of vibrating metal throughout the alley. He jumped out and kicked it again and again, threw his fists at it, kneed it in the gut, throttled its rim with his hands as though it was an informant refusing to give him answers.

"No. No. No. NO!" he screamed, beating the helpless hunk of metal to a pulp, blowing permanent dents into its steel face the size of his fists.

He kicked it with his heel and it pushed him backward defiantly. He clenched his teeth, yanked out his katanas and sent a flashing silver bout of blades perforating down on the dumpster like a gale of lightning.

"Leo."

He whipped around, casting out one arm with a lethal strike that cut itself short directly before Raphael's throat.

Leonardo glared down the length of his katana, paying no mind to the trembling of his arm or the sting in his eyes. His blood ran hot and fast through his veins and a film of red entered his vision.

"_You_," he hissed, his voice slithering down the metal of his blade and cutting his brother across the cheek in a venomous whisper.

His grip tightened on the handle of his sword but all he could feel was the emptiness of his palm—where if Raphael had not interfered, he would be holding Karai right now. There was something that he had been trained eleven years of his life to do to those that got in the way of his objective, and his muscles now strained themselves with the temptation to unleash that training on his brother.

The red-banded turtle neither blinked nor lifted his chin away from his brother's threatening blade. "Leo—"

"I had her," he interrupted, arm shaking but voice steady. "I was _this_ close!" he shouted, stepping forward, pressing the tip of his blade against his brother's skin. Raphael didn't flinch. "I _had_ her!"

A ripple of predictable cheek flashed across Raph's eyes. "No you didn't. Your ass was half a second away from being flattened by a truck!" he shouted back.

"I could've brought her home Raph!"

"Leo you just screwed our entire mission! You said we were up here for mutagen and mutagen only—we could've come back for her. Now we don't even know where she is again, the damned Foot probably has her!"

"Because_ you_ pushed me out of the way—"

"I _saved_ your shell Leo—"

"You always screw things up!"

"Shut up! This is _your _fault and you know it!"

Leonardo's katanas clattered to the ground as he chucked them aside. He took one threatening step forward.

"Leo! Raph!"

"_Dudes_! You guys are such epic jerks."

Leonardo hardly blinked at the approach of his brothers. He kept his eyes narrowed on Raph as his muscles solidified and resolved to keep stock still.

Raphael traded his reluctance to match Leo's glower with a shove against the older turtle's plastron before turning to shout at Donnie and Mikey. "Where the shell have you two been?"

The two younger turtles stopped at the mouth of the alleyway, panting and bruised. Donnie leaned carefully against the wall, presenting the splattered artwork of foreign blood staining his plastron. Mikey cradled the duffle bag of mutagen against his chest and twisted his freckled face into a look of scorn—only it didn't work as flawlessly as he probably thought it did. Mikey normally couldn't pull off the 'I'm totally pissed at you guys' guise.

"Well—after you guys _ditched_ us, Shredder's pet mutants tried to turtle-nap Donnie," exclaimed the little one in orange. "I had to Chuck Norris their asses to save him." He swiped a thumb across his beak and sniffed smugly. "Because I'm awesome like that…But you two _totally _aren't."

Donnie didn't comment on Mikey's explanation; his brown eyes were watching Leo, who looked back at him with a glare. "What happened to Karai?" he asked cautiously, his brow furrowed with concern.

Leo's chest expanded dangerously and he didn't stop help himself from pushing Raphael to the side. "Raph let her get away, and Tigerclaw probably has her now," he growled.

He watched Raphael's jaw flutter, but his red-banded brother did not turn to face him. "_Fearless_ almost got his shell crushed by a semi and is pissed because I pushed him out of the way."

"I would've been fine."

"Yeah. Fine as road-kill Leo," Raph shot back, just barely shooting him a glare.

Leo snapped a sharp blue gaze at his brother and used his foot to fluidly sweep up one of his katanas into his palm. He aimed the tip back at his brother threateningly, stepping forward. "I didn't ask for your help Raph," he said, voice rising to an echoing level.

"Whoa Leo," Donnie cautioned, limping over to calmly ease down the point of his brother's katana. "Look, I understand you're mad, but now's not the time for an argument. We need to get back to the lair and—"

"I'm not going back home without Karai!" he shouted, the very moment that Raph shoved Donnie's shoulder and exclaimed something about not needing his protection.

Though the jostle caused him to stumble forward a bit, Donatello ignored Raph and gazed at his older brother with soft, pleading brown eyes. "Leo, we can come back for her," he reasoned calmly. "If the Foot has her than it's more imperative than ever that we finish the retro-mutagen so we can change her back. Otherwise they'll use her against us."

Leo gritted his teeth, his katana-wielding arm trembling again. He couldn't loosen his grip. He couldn't breathe steadily. He couldn't shake the sound of his own heartbeat pulsing in his ears. Donnie couldn't _possibly_ expect him to actually wrap his mind around what he was saying.

A war waged beneath his skin, shaking his bones at the thought of returning home to explain to his sensei what happened, that he'd found Karai and yet stood before his father empty-handed. He felt like he was going to throw up.

He shot a glare over Donnie's shoulder at Raph who had his arms crossed in a silent fury, his glower cast to the side, jaw taut.

A fire burned in Leo's stomach.

"Leo," Donnie said softly, resting a gentle hand on his brother's rigid shoulder.

It was only out of stiff respect that Leonardo met Donatello's gaze.

"We'll get her back," said the sensible brother. "I promise…We need to go home; we got what we came for."

Leo's jaw rippled with strain. He squinted to the point of blindness to defend himself against the sting in his eyes. He could hear his shell creaking with indecision as he leaned in no particular direction. Voices were screaming in the back of his head.

_This is all Raph's fault._

_Go after Karai._

_Donnie's right._

_I'm gonna hurt him._

He closed his eyes, pried his teeth apart, then finally exhaled through his nose and swiped up his other katana, sheathing both weapons on his shell.

"Let's get out of here," he grumbled, walking past Donnie and Mikey and knocking shoulders with Raph.

He didn't meet his brother's scowl.


	12. Chapter 12

The ride home was quiet—nothing to be heard but the sturdy hum of the Shellraiser carrying them to a, rather reluctant, safety. There was a difference, and a universal one at that, between strutting home with the inflated pride of a successfully executed mission gleaming on their shells and riding back to the lair in a bumpy silence with the emptiness of a job half-done hanging in the air. This was one of the latter times, and to the leader in blue, a job half-done might as well have been tallied under an epic fail. Rest assured, Leo would not to let them brush this one off their shoulders—_especially_ not Raphael.

Michelangelo, who was sitting in an unnatural silence with his knees together, gingerly swaying in his seat with his toes on the floor and his heels against the chair, peeked up at his eldest brother. Leonardo may as well have been a silicon bus driver with cold blue eyes that stared straight ahead unblinkingly and a grip on the wheel that gave his green knuckles a pale flush, whose one and only purpose was to deliver a load of insufferable children to their home—no emotions attached. This was just a façade of course, there was so much emotion bottled up in that wannabe hero that Mikey could practically see his head rising with pressure, like the cap on a soda bottle, shaken and ready to pop.

The youngest turtle's round blue eyes flickered to his brother in red. Raph had his arms stuffed over his plastron quite typically, staring at the bleeping monitor in front of him as though he was sitting at home watching a television show he wasn't particularly fond of, except that his bright green eyes were so sharp Mikey was surprised the fragile screen hadn't yet cracked down the middle.

While there were—as there always had been—four of them, there was no denying that the strained atmosphere reaching out to every corner of the spruced-up subway car was emitting from no more than two.

It was very normal for Raphael to nestle himself in a brooding silence, radiating anger and heat like he had been encompassed by flames and was smoldering in his own little corner of the universe, probably convincing himself that no one understood, ready to scald anyone that attempted to reach out to him.

And then there was Leo. While it wasn't necessarily abnormal for the leader to lose his temper, there was a very clear distinction between Leo when he was angry and when Leo was_ angry_. And right now, Mikey's blue-banded older brother was furious. But Leonardo didn't simmer or flare up or burst into flames like Raph did. He solidified, froze, turned into an ice cap with sickly sharp edges, seeping a kind of cold that made everyone around him shiver from the inside out.

Fire and ice these two were, bleeding their rage into everyone else's breathing space, turning it thick, sour, and humid. Mikey felt suffocated and didn't know whether to shiver or sweat. He was afraid to exhale, let alone crack a joke like usual when the tension between his brothers became overbearing. He wished it wasn't so quiet. He wished someone besides himself would say something. He got tired of being the one to kick the silent door down, usually with a comment that earned him a smack to the head. No, he did not _enjoy_ getting slapped around. It was just that sometimes his brothers needed to be reminded not to be too serious…Otherwise things like this happened, and Leo ended up too pissed to give orders, and Raph resolved to be an even greater ass than before.

Mikey wrung his hands together and sank his teeth into his bottom lip. He_ really_ hated this silence, but he wasn't the thoughtless airhead that his brothers—and even his sensei sometimes—often believed him to be. This particular situation was not one to test the boundaries on. He liked to be that one turtle that puffed up the courage to joke about things that would make other people cringe, but Karai was a subject that everyone—with the exception of bold and brash Raphael—had been tiptoeing around for weeks, not just for Leo's sake but for Splinter's as well. And with the events of the passing night, the situation had just escalated from make-a-joke-and-I-probably-won't-laugh to say-a-single-word-about-it-and-you-die.

It was funny, while at the same time completely nauseating, the interdependent connection between Raphael and Leonardo. From the day of their first wordless argument, it was thereby decreed that Raphael—also called Raph or Raphie—would not find contentment where Leonardo—also called Leo—was in utter _dis_content, and equally Leonardo would not discover peace where Raphael was there unsettled. Seeing as Raph was so emotionally driven and Leo spent half his time training to _conceal_ his emotions, the two hopeless terrapins were in a constant state of tug-of-war. And in this particular instance, Leonardo was the angriest mutant turtle on the face of the planet; commence the tug that dragged Raphael too into a status of absolute dissatisfaction. For Michelangelo to even _consider_ severing that rope was probably to forfeit his right to ever utter a one-liner ever again.

It jostled his insides to do so, but he remained quiet.

* * *

He didn't necessarily consider it an accomplishment that they arrived back at the lair having successfully articulated not a single word on the trip there.

He and his three brothers trooped out of the Shellraiser after the eerily cheerful ding dong parted the doors to release them into their natural habitat. There was the subtlest moment of rising tension as Raph and Leo wordlessly competed to be the first out the door and through the turnstiles, but when Mikey hung his head to deflect the roiling pressure, he heard neither Leo nor Raph make a sound, so he thought it safe to be a part of the return of the battle-worn warriors and let Donnie use his shoulder as a second crutch while his immediate older brother leaned the rest of his weight on his bo staff, walking with a limp specifically intended to keep his shell from jostling too much.

Since Mikey had taken a good look at it in the alleyway where they had retrieved the bag of mutagen he'd stashed away in a dumpster, he had been particularly careful not to let his eyes drift back to the jagged crack branching out from the rim of Donnie's carapace to the center of his back, revealing red-raw bits of flesh and tissue that should not have been exposed. It made his own shell shudder, as though cringing away from ever meeting the same fate. Donatello had assured him it would eventually heal itself and that he'd be fine so long as the wound stayed clean, but simply from the way Donnie elected to limp, Mikey was sure donning such an injury was no less than excruciating.

He helped his purple-banded brother shuffle past the turnstiles and looked up to see Splinter standing at the bottom of the steps, his collected posture not quite reaching his amber eyes as he watched his battered sons trundle in.

"What happened?" he said. Though his voice was quiet, the urgency in it practically echoed like a scream through the musty sewer atmosphere.

"Ask_ him_," Leo muttered, head angled toward the ground but eyes flashing quite obviously to Raphael who had drifted as far from Leo as possible since squeezing through the Shellraiser doors.

"Right," Raph spat, stopping at the top of the stairs. "Go ahead and pin this one on me, Leo. You want me to tell you what happened, Sensei? I did what my courageous leader asked me to only to have him chuck the entire operation and put me, Mikey, Donnie, and himself in danger," he nearly shouted, ticking the names off on his fingers.

"I had it under control," Leo said through his teeth, failing to keep a level tone.

"You were getting shot at!" Raph bellowed. He stomped over to where Mikey and Donnie stood and roughly pinched his youngest brother's cheek, not lifting his glare from Leo for a second. "Mikey and Donnie and me had to fight off the Kraang when we were specifically told half an hour beforehand _not_ to 'pick a fight with the Kraang,' while Captain Ryan let loose a monster that would have killed him if I hadn't got in the way!"

Leo was in Raph's face so fast, Mikey was no longer so sure that he had just seen the two brothers standing a good ten feet from each other.

"That _monster_"—he shoved Raph back a step—"was Karai! What did you want me to do, Raph? Leave her there?"

"Yes! For the love of…Jesus Christ, Leo, yes! There was no reason that we couldn't have gone back for her when we were ready, except that _you_ let your 'feelings' get in the way!"

"I knew what I was doing, Raph," Leo shouted, though his voice wavered with a faulty pitch. "And since when do you plan ahead?"

"Look at your team, Fearless!" Raph shrieked in an unnaturally high pitch, waving an arm toward the other two. "Donnie was snatched up by a fucking horsefly and you didn't even turn around!"

Mikey blinked. "Neither did you," he said, loud enough to be heard.

Raphael snapped a hot green glare at him but, as always, Mikey brushed it off effortlessly. He wasn't afraid of his brother.

"We didn't say anything about Stockman-fly being there," he pointed out. "I thought you didn't notice."

Mikey kept a solid blue gaze on his red-banded brother, but Raphael didn't utter a word, didn't even look at him anymore. He had turned his eyes up at the ceiling as though in exasperation, like he couldn't believe they were taking the time out of his Leo-bashing to put_ him_ under the spotlight. The words 'Mikey you're an idiot' rolled off of his skin without him even having to open his mouth. Michelangelo felt a rare bite of anger.

"You knew they were trying to take Donnie and you didn't _do_ anything?"

Raph's jaw fluttered but did not move.

"Raph—" he began to whine.

"Shut up, Mikey!" he snapped, finally looking at him again. "You were perfectly capable of handling it yourself."

Michelangelo felt his mouth open but, for once, nothing came out of it. He looked toward his purple-banded brother, searching those warm brown eyes for a clue of how to react to this.

Unfortunately, Donnie had always been the hardest for Michelangelo to read. Not that his older brother was any good at concealing his emotions. On the contrary, he was a pretty open book, almost as much as Mikey himself. And it wasn't that Donnie didn't ever get emotional, didn't ever feel things that revealed themselves in his features. It was just that the most reserved and least confrontational of all his brothers didn't flare up in bright neon colors like Raph or deflect the outside world with a steel shield like Leo. His reactions, compared to those of his siblings, were always muffled.

The look Donatello now gazed at Raphael with was unreadable. Michelangelo, however, was straight up hurt.

"I can't believe you guys," he finally said, though it came out whinier than he had anticipated. "You're even bigger epic jerks than I said you were earlier."

"You _guys_?" Leo stressed. "What did I do? I didn't know they had Donnie."

"Leo," Raph snapped. "Stop trying to act like you're this perfect replica of Sensei! You fucked up okay?! There's nothing else to it…Except that you're an epic jerk."

"Raphael," Splinter muttered warningly—though his tone suggested he wasn't quite eager yet to force the argument to an end. Mikey didn't understand when his sensei played these kinds of cards. It was like he wanted Leo and Raph to duke it out amongst themselves, but there was no way they'd ever find level ground on their own.

Raphael did an excellent job of brushing off Splinter's cautioning tone like he hadn't heard it. "Sensei, if I'm going to go out on missions, I'd like to know that I'm not going to be blindsided by a 'leader' who thinks the whole world revolves around him and his stupid crush."

Leo was fuming, green cheeks burning red as he struggled, for once, to parry Raph's stab.

Surprisingly, it was Donatello that spoke on Leo's behalf. "Raph," he started calmly, his voice slightly hoarse. "Leo put us in danger and you're mad about that; we get it. But you have to understand where he's coming from—"

"Donnie...For the hundredth freaking time tonight, _no one asked you_! When I want your smartass opinion I'll ask for it. Nobody needs your help right now. We're not a pile of robots that you can just fix, so shove off!"

"Why are you picking on Donnie, Raph?" Leo cut in.

"Why are you babying him, Leo?" Raph shot back. "Maybe he needs to toughen up."

"That's harsh dude," Mikey interjected. "You're just mad because—"

"Mikey, I will throttle you!"

"Raphael," Splinter snapped, firmer this time. "Do not threaten your brothers with violence. I have told you this time and again and do not wish to repeat myself any further. Apologize to your brothers."

"For _what, _Sensei?" Raph argued. "For risking my shell to save theirs? For having their backs when they stab their swords in mine? Oh yeah, I saved Leo's ass twice tonight, but I'm so sorry Mikey for being _mean_!"

"What about Donnie?" Mikey piped, not quite satisfied with his supposed apology. "What about ditching me and him to fight off the Kraang, what about ignoring the fact that he was almost turtle-napped?"

"Mikey, look at him! He's standing on his own two feet; I think he can freaking take care of himself. I am only one turtle, Mike; I'm not Superman—not like Donatello," he added coldly.

Donnie shifted uncomfortably. "Raph—"

"Don't deny it, Donnie," Raphael interrupted yet again. "You can quit the whole modesty act; everybody knows we'd be a pile of shit on the sidewalk without you—wouldn't we?"

"I'm not—"

"Yes you are, Donatello. Yes. You. Are…A Saint. Leo _tries_ to be perfect; you don't even have to lift a goddamned finger. You were 'turtle-napped' by a giant fly, and yet…" He threw his arms out in Donnie's direction in pseudo presentation. "Here you stand, peachy keen and ready to make a batch of retro-mutagen appear with the flick of a wand."

Donnie's brow furrowed. "Are you—mocking me?"

Raph clapped his hands loud and slow. "What a display of intelligence the world will never see! You deserve a plaque for figuring that one out, bro—no a gold metal—no a _statue_, dedicated to your unparalleled brain. It'll say: Hamato Donatello, eighth wonder of the world, the farthest thing from a human boy genius since the T-Rex. Geekosaurus, green-skinned, six-fingered, teenage mutant ninja turtle who's not even a real ninja and will never be anything more than—guess what—a freak!"

"_Yame_!" Splinter shouted, stabbing the floor with his staff.

However, it didn't really grab anyone's attention. All eyes were on Donnie as though anxiously awaiting the moment that he'd finally tell Raph off, scream in his face, shout back. He did no such thing. In fact, he just stood there staring at the red-banded bully in a long, drawn-out silence, almost as though Raphael's words hadn't registered. It was only the distant glaze in his eyes that suggested he knew he'd just been challenged, and though it took a pressurized pause, during which no one moved, Donnie did indeed finally open his mouth.

"Geekosaurus isn't a word," he mumbled quietly, slightly dropping his gaze.

Mikey's eyes widened and when he switched his gaze to Raphael he saw exactly what he feared.

It only took a second - a painfully tense and excruciating second that was probably nothing compared to what Donnie felt when Raph stepped forward and slapped his brother across the face so hard that Mikey cringed and even Leo let out an audible gasp.

Splinter didn't hesitate to reach out and pinch Raph's neck. He seized up, drawing his shoulder to his ear, and then it seemed his muscles became nothing more than soggy noodles and he sank to the ground, weakly rolling over and propping himself up on his elbows as he choked and groaned.

No one minded him. They all—including Splinter—looked toward Donnie whose chin remained over his right shoulder exactly where it had been forced around when Raph had hit him. He seemed to just be staring off into the distance as though there was something interesting to be seen over in the farthest, darkest corner of the lair. Only the pace of his breathing hinted that there was anything wrong.

"Donatello," Splinter spoke, not necessarily as questioning as he was gently demanding confirmation that his son was not too damaged.

"I'm fine," Donnie whispered without turning his head. There was a very unmistakable waver to his voice that wasn't all that convincing and, as a matter of fact, gave the impression that under-the-radar Donnie was close to tears.

Mikey reached up and placed a hand on his brother's shoulder. "Don—"

"I said I'm fine!" he shouted, yanking himself away from Mikey's touch and finally snapping his head around to shoot a very glossy-eyed glare at his younger brother.

He didn't continue to stand around after that, didn't even look at anyone else. He turned his back on them and started across the common room, head bowed, shoulders hunched. Mikey distinctly caught a glimpse of him tenderly brushing the back of his hand across his cheek.

It was sad really. He couldn't even walk straight let alone quickly. And Mikey knew if _he'd_ just been slapped around and humiliated by Raph like that, he'd want to get away as fast as possible, which was interesting because he did actually almost know exactly what that was like.

A three-way shouting match began directly next to him as Leo and Splinter both scolded Raphael, and Raph—who was still catching his breath on the floor—weakly argued back just because he was pissed and he could do that kind of thing…because he was Raph.

Mikey ignored it. He still couldn't really process what had just taken place. Raph was aggressive yes, and it wasn't unlike him to knock his brothers around every now and then—more often with Mike than the other two really—but it was never out of that full-fledged anger that he had just blatantly lashed out with on Donnie. And the look in his eyes this time had been an entirely different kind of rage than Mikey was used to seeing in him, it was a kind that made his eyes even greener than normal, a dark green, a poisonous green, one that maybe would've had Michelangelo feeling some sort of sympathy for Raph if it wasn't for that fact that he'd just slapped the mess out of Donatello. Had it been Leo or Mikey himself it might've been okay, but it wasn't, because Raphael had just attacked the gentlest, most vulnerable person in their family. That wasn't okay at all.

And so Mikey watched with a stomach full of grief as his brother with the purple mask limped away toward the only place that had ever graced him with the silence and space he needed to be who he was—that closed-in metal box full of computers, tools, and science-y things that was Donnie's sanctuary, and made Mikey's gut drop.

"Donnie, wait!"

He only had enough time to throw out a protesting hand before Donatello threw open his lab door and was immediately drenched in a gallon of pure, rotten sewage that attacked the entire lair with a stench too vial to name.

The shouting ceased, and Michelangelo's heart became a chunk of ice that lodged itself in his throat. He bit his lip, slapped a hand over his nose, and tried to shrink. Everyone watched in silence as Donatello, for a moment, didn't move. His shoulders heaved soundlessly up and down as his hand gripped the edge of the door in the exact position he'd opened it.

Slowly, he lifted that hand and raked it across the top of his head and down the tails of his mask, smearing the sewage away and splaying his palm out in front of him as though it would explain what had just happened.

He looked over his shoulder, meeting Michelangelo with sad, impenetrable brown eyes. And then he simply turned away and shut himself in his lab.

The force that he used to close the door with was so soft it made Mikey cringe even worse than if he would've slammed it.

Michelangelo, though he knew what he would face when he did, slowly turned to find Leo, Raph, and Splinter all gazing at him with bewildered—and in some cases almost blank-faced—expressions. A fair heat ripened on his cheeks. He stiffened his arms against his sides and bowed to his father.

"_Moushiwake gozaimasen_," he mumbled, then added, "I'll go get a mop."

Splinter nodded once. "Yes, you will. And do not apologize to _me,_ Michelangelo."

Mikey tilted his head curtly. "_Hai_, Sensei."


	13. Chapter 13

**This chapter gave me a little trouble, and I'm still not sure if I'm entirely satisfied with it. I just wanted to get it up and out of the way so that I could move on. If I make any changes to it later I'll definitely let you know, but right now it is what it is and I'll have the next chapter up soon. **

**And thanks for your reviews so far by the way. They're so encouraging! **

* * *

Leonardo did not look directly into those round amber eyes as he knelt before his sensei in the dojo. He instead pacified himself as best he could by staring at the rug beneath his knees, head bowed low, both out of respect and humiliation. There were so many innervations spiraling through his mind, he wasn't sure which to address, which to focus on—fear, anger, shame, concern? He felt like maybe someone should be trying to coax Donatello out of the lab or else shoving Raphael back through the turnstiles and sending him away to sit in some distant tunnel by himself, obscured by shadows and as far away from everyone else as possible. He felt like he had greater obligations than to be kneeling in the dojo right now, that he should be on the surface leading a full-partied search for Karai…If only his full party could actually act like a unit and watch each other's shells like they were supposed to. Instead, his brothers wanted to pick fights and be spiteful and dump sewage on one another.

Leo slightly shook his head to himself, feeling a little more anger than anything for an allotted moment. Mikey's stupid prank couldn't have been more poorly timed. Raph couldn't have been a bigger douche. And while he felt a tense knot of remorse for Donatello and the way that his intelligent younger brother just been treated, he was also very frustrated. He, more than anyone else, had been fully rooting for Donnie to put his foot down on the offense that Raph had brought to the game. Even more, he wished the pacifistic turtle would've just cast all his timidity to the side and brought down the biggest boot he had, stomp on Raphael like the cockroaches he had such an aversion to. How about that for irony? But no, Donnie had been predictably tender and vulnerable and couldn't even look Raphael in the eye when he'd responded with the little cheek that he did, and as a result had allowed himself to be plowed over, not once but twice.

These were not the kind of things Leo wanted to be focused on. He desperately wished they could start the night over, that all that had taken place within the past few hours could be rewound and redone. What he would do differently he wasn't sure. Probably not bring Raph. _Definitely_ not let everything tumble as far downhill as it had—hitting every pothole along the way. It was a disaster—just a black puddle of a thick and sticky, unnamable substance that they had somehow, through the course of the night, found a way to get stuck in. Now they were covered in muck and slowly sinking in a furious panic. His brain was throbbing with the mess of it all. Maybe he could put in a request for a temporary leave. Maybe he could just forget about his brothers for a minute and do whatever his instincts told him to do, which at the moment, he was pretty sure, wasn't to be sitting so still.

Splinter was doing that thing. The one where he calmly sat with a fully erected back and simply gazed down his long nose at whoever was in front of him in a contemplative silence, slowly stroking his beard as though he wasn't sure what to do with this heap of sticky, black goo sitting in front of him.

Leonardo was tense. With all the muddled mess of disturbances tumbling around in his head, none were as loud and unsettling as the weight of failure. He hadn't forgotten what it would mean to sit himself before his sensei, exactly as he was now, and admit his mistakes—that he had, as Raph so eloquently put it, "fucked up." He desperately did not want Karai's absence to be his own fault. Especially since their entire existence now seemed to revolve around the negative space she'd left behind, which had only grown hollower since he and his brothers had returned home yet again without her.

For a month he'd been impatient—to be the _one_ that made everything okay, not just for himself but for his father as well. And all it would take would be to present his rat master with the one thing, the one _person_ Leonardo knew his sensei was so focused on. It was just as much a matter of getting his father back as it was of bringing Karai home safely. And this was what Raphael did not understand. He doubted even Donnie was aware.

Splinter lately spent so much time either meditating in the dojo or, for the most part, concealed in his room behind his _shoji_ screens, and the young turtle could not put to rest the fear of having lost his sensei _along_ with Karai all because he himself had made so many mistakes—tripped, stumbled, inattentively ran forward and missed a few crucial steps.

As a child he used to sit in front of those dividers, marveling at the craftsmanship in years of Japanese history staining the paper panels. He loved the _shojis_, because whenever he sat there, Splinter would find him, and he'd sit beside the little turtle, occasionally allowing him to climb up in his lap, and he'd tell Leonardo stories, animate the paintings that Leo spent so much time admiring.

Two weeks ago, the blue-banded terrapin had sat himself down in front of the _shojis_, staring at the paintings and recalling the stories, but Splinter did not emerge from behind them—not after one hour, not after two. And the eldest son had realized that without his sensei the shojis were just colorful paper screens and meant no more to him than an empty pizza box.

Splinter had never necessarily requested that they call him anything other than Master Splinter or Sensei, but lately Leonardo had come to understand better than ever that the old rat—who had raised him and his brothers, taught them everything he knew, not just in ninjutsu but with proverbs and stories to demonstrate essentialities such as love and hope and trust, and who had_ chosen_ to don the responsibility of providing necessities and protection and a parental caring for them that they would've never known otherwise—was nothing less than his father. And he wanted his father to start _being_ his father again. And so they _needed_ Karai—so that Splinter could be whole again, which in turn, would make his children whole again.

Nothing was more disappointing than to see the straight-lined frown hidden in his sensei's fur, which reminded him so greatly of Karai to begin with…And for it to come into existence because he himself was not good enough—just intensified his desire to fill the hole that had been created.

"I'm sorry, Sensei," he said over a heavy exhale, squinting at the carpet. "Raph…" He paused as his teeth automatically clenched together as though to protest the words he intended to speak, but he finally closed his eyes and drew in a humbling breath. "He—was right. I was the one who jeopardized our mission. I put them all in danger and I…I…"

His sight began to blur and that made him fearful. He didn't want to cry in front of Master Splinter. Splinter never cried in front of_ them_. Not that Leonardo could recall anyway. His sensei had complete mastery of himself, which was something the little protégé one day hoped to achieve. It was the very thing he pushed himself so hard for. To be incapable of shutting off his tears seemed…weak.

He tried closing his eyes, using his eyelids as a barrier to block the tears from falling, but all this did was break a few loose and send them cascading down his cheeks. He wiped them away furiously, drew in a large breath, and continued to speak as steadily as he could make himself.

"I—let Karai go. I was the one who gave her a way out, a way to escape. It thought I could catch up to her, but I was too slow, I was…not good enough," he mumbled, mostly to himself. He felt a rush of sensitivity and had to choke out the last words for fear of falling completely apart. "I'm sorry, Sensei. I failed you again."

There was a long pause, during which Leonardo did not dare look up. Was Splinter angry? Leo knew he would be if the roles were reversed. "How could you be so reckless?" he could imagine his sensei saying. "You acted irrationally, and therefore you secured your own failure. I am disappointed in you, Leonardo."

His muscles coiled when Splinter released a long, heavy sigh, but the words succeeding it were soft and held not a hint of disapproval.

"My son," Splinter spoke softly, tilting Leo's chin up with two ginger fingers. His thumb gently wiped away the tears on the turtle's cheeks, but his eyes gave no notion that he was aware of them. "Do not judge yourself so harshly. You made a mistake, yes. But to punish yourself for such a thing is unwise. Mistakes are learning tools; they help us grow. And we are ninja; it is our duty to adapt to all circumstances. It was perfectly acceptable for you to seek out the larger objective where you found an opening, but to do so without consulting your team and then to completely forget your previous responsibilities was where your mistake came into play."

Leo's lip quivered. "She was there, Sensei. I couldn't just let her go."

"But at the expense your brothers', Leonardo…Would it have been worth it?"

The young turtle dropped his gaze. "No," he said thickly. "It's just…I didn't want to let you down, Sensei."

Splinter smiled sadly and moved his hand to his son's shoulder, squeezing it encouragingly. "You are a very good leader, Leonardo. I have never expected perfection from you, but you have a very particular way of impressing me, whether you wish to believe that or not. I have full faith in you, my son. You may not have succeeded in the way that you wished to tonight, but that does not mean you cannot try again when you are even stronger. All I ask is that you remember you are not alone."

Leonardo rubbed at his mask with a nod, trying not to let on that Splinter's words had just formed a knot in his throat. "_Hai_, Sensei."

"Good." Splinter patted his shoulder. "However, this is not what I asked to speak with you about."

Leonardo's brow creased. "It's not?"

"No. I am worried for your brother. I must ask if you are aware of anything that might be troubling him."

Leo narrowed his eyes, further confused. "Well, Sensei, I think_ I'd_ be a little upset if I just got slapped in the faced and slimed with sewage."

Splinter was already shaking his head. "I am not talking about Donatello. Do you know if there is anything upsetting Raphael?"

Leo scoffed. "Something's _always_ upsetting Raph. Either that or he's just mean because he's bored."

"I do not believe that is the case, Leonardo. I implore you to look a little more closely."

Leo blinked. "You mean you actually want _me_ to figure out what his problem is?"

"Yes."

The corners of Leo's mouth wilted. "With all due respect, Master Splinter, Raph and I don't exactly—coincide. _Especially_ not now," he added, trying not to let his anger flare again, trying not to pin all the blame on his brother for the night's disastrous turn of events even though Raph was as much involved as Leo. "I don't think he'd be very willing to talk to me about it."

Splinter nodded in agreement, calmly stroking his beard. "Yes, but this is exactly why I am asking this of you, Leonardo. I think it is time you and your brother put your differences aside. And I have the peculiar feeling that, while the two of you may not currently find level ground with one another, in the end he would only be most willing to open up to _you_.

"You have a way of challenging him that does not compare to your brothers. Michelangelo is very much prone to getting carried away with the amusement he finds in irritating Raphael, and as we have seen tonight, Donatello has not yet figured out how to match his aggression. But you, my son, have discovered how to confront your brother in a way that both allows him freedom of expression and demands his respect. As often as he voices an opinion that is against your own, he has a very firm admiration for you that he does not wish to admit—not even to himself. He _will _talk to you."

Leonardo took in a long breath and let it out slowly, gazing up at his sensei doubtfully. But Splinter seemed pretty resolved. His amber eyes gazed too upon Leo with a wise confidence that his eldest son could never match.

The obedient student finally bowed his head and muttered, "I'll do what I can, Sensei."


	14. Chapter 14

He sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the shadows splayed across his wall. Normal teenagers had posters of famous bands, movies, and television characters on their walls, as a statement declaring who he or she was as a person. He had the warped shadows of demons decorating _his _wall. It wasn't intentional, but as he sat there biting the inside of his lip and bouncing his knee with his chin on his fists, he had to wonder if it wasn't just coincidence that his room was always so dark and held the touches of something…evil.

He stopped biting his lip to grit his teeth as a hot spout of anger, bubbled up in his gut. He snatched a sai from his belt and flung it with expertise, creating yet another hole in the wall to add to the speckled collection.

"I don't have a problem," he muttered to himself. He stood and yanked his weapon from the wall, then began to pace aimlessly along an invisible line, gently poking the tip of his sai at his finger. "It's not _my_ fault. Leo was the one that screwed everything up and Donnie—was asking for it." His voice faltered with the last few words, but he scrunched up his face defiantly and kept the anger going. It was the only thing that kept him from being a blame to himself.

He turned sharply on his heel and walked back toward the other side of his room, clenching and unclenching the hand that wasn't clutching his sai. It was the very same hand that had struck his purple-banded, dork of a brother across the face.

"It's not my fault," he repeated. "He was asking for it."

It was his signature mantra—rolling around his head, tumbling off of his tongue, and echoing around the room over and over again. And he suddenly remembered that this was a regular thing. He'd been constantly reciting these words over and over again, not just to himself but to his sensei as an excuse for anything that he had ever done to make his brothers cry or whine or point a finger in his direction.

He saw himself when he was about six or seven years old, sauntering up to his immediate younger brother, who then had actually been smaller than both Leo and Raph. Donatello was smiling a wide, gappy grin and following the progress of a remote control car with proud, shining eyes. The car, for the most part, was red, had two different sized pairs of wheels at the front and back, and looked like the Frankenstein of toy cars—not unlike the modern-day Shellraiser—but it followed the mute command of Donnie's hands as he pushed on switches with his thumbs, caressing an old controller between his palms. Raph knew for a fact that Donnie had spent nearly three weeks putting this toy together, and at that point, had spent nearly a whole hour playing with it, occasionally picking it up to adjust a part on it.

"I wanna turn," Raph stated, stepping up directly next to his brother.

"Okay, give me a minute," Donnie responded without looking at him.

Raph wrinkled his beak. "You've been playin' with it for like an hour."

"I know, but I'm checking the velocity. I wanna see if I can make it go faster."

"Can't you do that after my turn?"

"No."

Child Raphael bared his teeth impatiently then unthinkingly snatched at the controller in Donnie's hands. But the little turtle did not let go as Raph had anticipated. Donatello tugged back on it instead.

Raph growled. "Gimme it! You had your turn."

"Let go, it's mine._ I_ built it!" Donnie shouted back. "Go make your own."

"I can't!"

They yanked at the little black box between them, turning in struggling circles and shoving each other back and forth until Raphael let go and the controller smacked little Donnie in the face and he stumbled backward. He didn't start crying until he rubbed his beak with a miniature fist and it came away with blood on it. Raphael's stomach dropped and he immediately rushed over to his brother and tried to calm him down, yanking off his own mask to try to wipe the blood from his brother's face.

"Shh! I'm sorry. I'm sorry!"

Splinter rushed in then, followed by the two other little turtles, one of which was clinging to his robe with a tight fist. Raphael felt himself shaking with fear and couldn't help but gaze up at his sensei with wide terrified eyes, knowing full and well that he would get into trouble for hurting his younger brother. But Splinter said nothing as he stooped down to scoop up the sobbing six-year-old in his arms, except maybe to whisper a few consoling words in Japanese, gingerly urging Donnie's head to rest against his shoulder.

Then he shot his amber eyes down at Raph. The rat didn't even have to open his mouth.

"It's not my fault!" Raphael immediately exclaimed. "I mean, I just wanted a turn. He—he was asking for it!" Though he shouted this in full desperation, it made his stomach twist into knots, because when Splinter turned away without speaking, all Raph could see was his younger brother burying his wet and blood-smeared face into his father's shoulder. He knew very well that it was his fault.

That night he'd crept into his younger brother's room and quietly set the Frankenstein car and its controller on the floor next to Donnie's bed, and stuck a crumpled scrap of paper beside it on which he had scrawled, in his best sloppy, childish handwriting 'I'm sorry.' Then he turned away and quickly headed for the door, but for all his stealthiest efforts, he still heard a shift of movement before he was able to make it out of the room. He froze, hoping that his brother was just rolling over in his sleep, but the whisper of Donatello's voice denied his wish.

"It's okay Raphie," Donnie yawned.

Raphael turned only his head to peek over his shoulder through the shadows at his younger brother who was rubbing his eyes with one fist and clutching the note in the other.

Not knowing what else to do, he nodded and whispered, "I love you Donnie."

"I love you too Raph."

Sixteen-year-old Raphael narrowed his eyes at the floor, just having realized that he'd stopped pacing a while ago and was simply standing in the middle of his room. His jaw had loosened and his sai had found its way on the floor. He stooped to pick it up as a knock touched his door and intruded on his solitude.

His teeth came together again. He didn't want any company.

He threw himself on his bed, stuffing his face into his pillow and didn't answer…So of course the knocker entered anyway. Raph knew immediately by the smallish presence that it was Mikey, though also more because Michelangelo never closed the door behind him when he fully entered any room.

Raphael didn't take his head out of his pillow to look, but he knew his younger brother had walked straight up to his bedside and was staring down at him. Though for the longest time, the resilient turtle chose to be a silent presence.

"What do you want Mikey?" he mumbled, voice muffled.

"I wanted to ask you why you did it," Mikey responded immediately in a tone that was very stiff for him.

Raph groaned and turned on his side, shell facing his younger brother, face half-glaring at the wall just inches from his nose. "I already heard it from Leo and Splinter. I don't need it from you too okay?"

"Dude, why do you have to be so _mean_?"

He growled through his teeth, not so much angry as exasperated. "Mikey I'm not mean. I'm just…Ugh! Go away."

"Not until you verify yourself."

He rolled his eyes at the shadows painting his walls. "You mean justify?"

"Whatever."

He scoffed, crossing his arms. "I don't need to explain myself to you."

"So you know you were totally uncool for that right?"

"I'm not sorry, if that's what you're saying," he snapped.

"Says the turtle who can't even _look _at anyone right now."

He didn't respond.

"Raph, you _really _crossed the line."

"Yeah, whatever."

"Donnie won't come out of his lab."

"So what?"

"Dude, he's been crying in there for like an _hour_."

Raph's stomach twisted and he found the corners of his mouth pulling down at a slant. He pursed his lips at an attempt to make it stop, but really could only be grateful that his room was so dark. He tried to cough up a hard-boiled remark but nothing came to mind. He could only swallow.

He sensed his younger brother crouching closer to his shell. "Raph, is this about Leo and Donnie being such good bros?"

Raphael's stomach boiled. "Mikey I don't know what you're talking about," he exclaimed with quick denial. "Donnie got slapped because he's a smartass and he was due."

Mikey scoffed at his back. "So all that stuff about him being so perfect wasn't you being totally jealous?"

He squeezed his eyes shut and refrained from whirling around and punching his brother in the face. "I'm not jealous Mike!"

"Well it sure sounded like it."

He clenched his fists over his eyes. "Ugh! What do you _want_?!"

"For my brothers to get along for once, that's what," Mikey snapped, his tone a kind of frustrated Raphael wasn't used to hearing from him. "Why is that so hard Raph?"

The older turtle could feel his pulse pounding in his temples. He didn't want to do to Mikey what he'd done to Donnie—not like that. But he couldn't suppress the demon in his chest just itching to rip open his plastron and demolish everything in its path. So he pried his teeth apart instead.

"Get out Mikey."

There was a heavy moment of silence as Michelangelo's presence did not lessen, and Raph could swear he felt his brother's blue eyes gazing down at him in shame. Then Mikey huffed.

"Fine…Here. I made this for you." There was a sound like a ceramic plate being dropped on his bedside table. Then his normally jubilant younger brother growled a stiff, "Happy Mutation Day," and left the room, letting the door close loudly behind him.

Raph waited until the fire had boiled down to a low simmer in his gut, then he slowly took his fists away from his face and opened his eyes, letting his pupils adjust in a soft gaze at the wall before he sat up and turned over to see what Mikey had left him.

He wished he hadn't.

Sitting in the middle of, what was indeed, a plate, was a large cupcake carefully frosted with green icing and decorated with the strip of a red Airhead and two white almond shapes with green dots in the middle. Raph's signature smirk had been perfectly painted onto the bottom half of the cupcake with black icing, but the real Raphael was far from splitting a cocky grin.

He slowly closed his eyes and grimaced.


	15. Chapter 15

***Gasp!* Chapter 15. Okay...Let's keep it going.**

* * *

He locked the bathroom door and then tugged on the handle to make sure it had indeed sealed itself shut before turning toward the sink to set down the vial of clear liquid and the syringe he had brought with him. He did not look at his reflection in the mirror. He didn't want to see. He knew his eyes would be unrecognizably puffy and bloodshot—they weren't entirely dry yet either.

He sniffed and wiped his wrist carefully across his beak. It was clean for the most part.

He couldn't believe he had been so stupid, so negligent to his own well-being. He should've done this an hour ago. Instead he'd basically screwed himself by throwing a pity party in his lab and electing to sit balled up in the corner with his face in his knees, coated in slime for an hour.

"You're such an idiot," he hissed, glaring with burning eyes into the sink as he turned the hot water faucet.

He scrubbed his hands furiously until he was as satisfied as he could be with what he felt was a limited amount of time. He leaned closer to the sink and scrubbed the grime off of his left arm. He should've grabbed the first aid kit from his lab before doing this. Rubbing alcohol would better clear away the bacteria. He could only imagine how incredibly infested he was—probably twenty-thousand times more so than on a regular basis living as a turtle in the sewers. But he didn't want to leave the bathroom again. He'd caught a lucky break, peeking out of his lab in time to see Mikey strolling in the general direction of Raphael's room. But there was no telling how long his younger brother would be in there. He didn't want anyone to see him like this—a pathetic mess that had wasted critical time.

He continued to sniff and became frustrated when the green-brown substance coating his skin kept crying onto the spot he had just cleaned. He gritted his teeth and scrubbed his skin raw between his forearm and his bicep. Then he threw the filthy washcloth into the sink and simply hoped that he had been efficient enough.

He picked up the syringe and attempted to insert the needle into the vial through the corked top; however, it was proving more difficult a task than he normally found it. His hands were trembling much too aggressively. He could not make them stagnant long enough to even poke the stopper. His muscles tensed and he refrained from throwing both vial and syringe on the ground out of anger. Instead he clutched them in his fists and punched the rim of the sink. There was a loud crack as it broke at the neck and jerked about an inch from the wall. A pipe was shaken loose and it regurgitated a stream of cold water over the top of the sink and shot him in the face. He threw his hands up and turned away, crouching down and cuddling the medical tools close to his plastron as he, for a moment, squeezed his eyes shut and sobbed against the edge of the bathtub out of frustration.

The sound of water droplets pattering in a steady stream against the floor was annoying. Yet another thing he'd have to fix. For now, he whirled around and kicked the sink back against the wall and the spout of water ceased. He swallowed and sniffed again, sitting with his shell against the tub. He took a moment to catch his breath and forced his tears to stop, then proceeded to wipe his face and again clear away a spot on his arm.

This time he nearly bit off the tip of his tongue trying to keep his limbs from quivering. It didn't do much but he did manage to jam the needle into the cork and fill the syringe with antiseptic fluid. When it had what it could hold, he yanked it out of the cork, took his time flicking the tip and checking for air pockets, then poised the needle over his arm as steadily as possible. He blinked rapidly to clear away the blur and took several deep breaths while clenching and unclenching his left hand, watching his muscles tense and relax and taking note of the locations of his veins. He swallowed dryly and tried not to let his heart beat too fast.

After all these years of playing the family physician and getting onto his brothers about letting him give them regular vaccines and injections to prevent illnesses and infections that were very likely to fester from living in the New York sewers, he still severely loathed getting shots himself—especially when he had to administer them to himself with trembling hands. But he couldn't go out and find someone to help. He was still in pieces. He didn't want—didn't _need_ them to see him this way.

He dragged in one, long, full breath, convinced his hands to stay still for a moment, and inserted the needle into his skin as he exhaled. The sharp sensation of steel digging into his flesh nauseated him. He clenched his teeth. Bile was the last thing he needed to top off the raw sewage he was already wearing. Who knew what kind of monstrous diseases and contagions were already at work in his veins?

When the entire vial of antibodies had been injected into his blood stream, he turned his head and slowly pulled the needle out, then stood quickly—dizzying himself—and set the empty vial and syringe back on the lopsided sink. He then turned back to the tub and immediately turned on the showerhead, steaming up the room and fogging the mirror in a matter of minutes. He stripped off his knee and elbow pads, belt, bandages, and holster and left them in a pile on the floor, making a note to himself to remember his saturated mask which he had left on the floor in the lab.

Using the wall for support, he stepped carefully into the shower and hissed through his teeth as the hot water hit his cracked shell and came in contact with the irritated flesh that was exposed. He pressed his palms and forehead against the wall for a moment, grimacing as the pain seared throughout his back with every drop that found its way into that crack. He felt like he was getting branded.

He opened his eyes and tried not to become ill as he watched a diluted brownish-green and red stream of united blood and sewage drip down his legs, flow between his feet and swirl around the drain, mingling and mating before washing out of sight. He swallowed, then grabbed a clean washcloth and began to scrub himself down.

It wasn't until he had successfully disinfected the fleshy green parts of his body that he realized he would never be able to reach behind him to effectively clean and sterilize his wound. He ground his teeth and shut off the water then carefully stepped out of the tub. With the hope that he didn't look nearly as distraught as he had a moment ago, he cracked open the bathroom door and just barely poked his head into the cool, musty atmosphere of the lair, letting coils of steam roll out above his head. It wasn't two seconds later that Michelangelo emerged from the kitchen.

"Mikey," Donnie called quietly.

The little orange-banded turtle looked up and gazed across the lair at his brother with an unsmiling face that was very unlike him. "Hey Donnie," he greeted gently as though afraid his tone might upset Donatello's thrown-together composure. "What's up bro?"

"Can you get Master Splinter for me?"

Mikey's blue eyes just barely jumped back toward the dojo for half a second. "I think he's talking to Leo…What do you need? Can I help?"

Donnie hadn't realized until then that Mikey was wringing his hands together—a nervous tick he fell into when he was disheveled and did not know what to do with himself. He hadn't turned the television on or picked up a comic book, God only knew how long he'd been pacing around the kitchen without an appetite or an idea while his family was scattered, closed off, and in no mood to socialize. The poor humanoid turtle thing. It wasn't like he never got upset, but it happened so rarely that when he did it was a foreign sensation to him and he became aimless and indecisive, which no doubt only intensified whatever frustration he was feeling.

"Yeah," Donnie sighed. "Can you um…Can you grab the first aid kit from my lab?"

"Sure thing," the little turtle piped, flashing the smallest of grins at being given a task.

He disappeared and came back a short moment later cradling a giant, forest green box in his arms. Donnie stepped back and ushered his brother to bring it into the bathroom and Michelangelo did not hesitate to obey.

"Dude, the sink," he said tilting his head at the lopsidedness of the basin against the wall.

"I know," Donnie mumbled, closing the bathroom door and locking it again.

"Dude, you're naked."

Donnie rolled his eyes and grabbed the box from Mikey's arms to set it down on the toilet and rummage through its contents.

"And you're wet."

"I just got out of the shower Mikey," he snapped softly, picking up a half-empty bottle of peroxide and weighing it against a new bottle of rubbing alcohol.

"What's this?"

Donnie glanced over to see his little brother inspecting the empty vial, apparently oblivious to the used syringe occupying the opposite side of the sink.

"It was an antiseptic."

Mikey's eyes finally found the syringe. "Did you just give yourself a shot?" he exclaimed with slight disgust.

"Yes."

"Ugh…" He stuck his tongue out and replaced the vial on the sink, stepping away from it as though the thing itself was infected. "That's grody bro. I couldn't do that. You know how I get on vaccination day."

"Alright Mikey," Donnie said, straightening himself up and fully turning toward his brother. "I need you to help me with this."

"Yeah sure anything," Mikey rambled before taking his eyes away from his surroundings. Donnie turned to present his damaged shell and the little turtle's eyes suddenly bugged. "Anything—_except_ for that."

Donnie rolled his eyes again and climbed in the tub. "You don't have a choice. If Splinter's talking to Leo then they'll be occupied for another couple of hours and I'm _not_ getting Raph to do it."

"Why can't _you_ do it? You're the best with this kind of stuff."

"Because I'm not Mr. Fantastic Mikey! Can _you_ reach the back of your shell?"

Mikey stared for a moment before turning his chin over his shoulder and reaching back with his arm, inadvertently throwing himself into a spinning circle, like a dog trying to catch its own tail. Donnie growled through his teeth. He was not in the mood for this. He grabbed the tails of his brother's mask and yanked him closer to the tub.

"That was a rhetorical question," he grumbled.

"A what?"

"Would you just pour this on the wound please?!" He thrust both the peroxide and alcohol into Mikey's hands.

The orange-clad terrapin glanced between the two bottles and then looked up at his injured brother with spacey blue eyes. Donnie sighed and when he spoke next his voice was tender again.

"Use the alcohol first," he instructed, pointing out the clear bottle. "Then you're going to have to inspect the wound and make sure there's no residue left over. If there is you'll have to wash it out. Then use the peroxide." He pointed to the brown bottle. "Got it?"

"I think so," Mikey said breathlessly.

The older turtle pinched his lips. "Which one is the alcohol?"

Mikey held up the clear bottle.

"Which one is the peroxide?"

He held up the brown.

"What are you going to do after you pour the alcohol?"

"Check for r-res…?"

"Residue."

"What's that?"

Donnie dragged in a deep, calming breath. "Dirt, sewage or anything else that looks like it might infect the wound. You'll have to let me know if there's any blood, how much, and if it has started clotting."

Mikey's face looked abnormally pale. "Okay," he squeaked.

"What do you do if there's residue?"

"Wash it out."

"And after that?"

He held up the brown bottle and Donnie nodded satisfactorily. No, Michelangelo was not the ideal person for this job, but he'd be damned if he went to Raphael for help, and he couldn't wait on Splinter and Leo. He had already wasted enough time. He slowly turned his back to his brother and knelt down in the tub.

"Aw dude," Mikey whined.

"Mikey…"

"I can't do this."

"Suck it up. I've done worse for you. You were the one that slimed me with sewage. If I die from clostridium tetani it's going to be on you."

At this the young turtle went quiet and set the peroxide on the edge of the tub.

Donnie tensed, waiting with his hands gripping his knees. He blindly followed his brother's movements, and though he could sense when the opened bottle of alcohol was hovering just over his shell, he was still unprepared for the shock of cold, burning liquid coming in contact with his open flesh. He cupped his hands over his mouth, but the shrill moan of pain had already escaped his throat. Tears sprang to his eyes and his shell quivered with coiled muscles.

"D…"

"Just keep pouring it until I tell you to stop!" Donnie gasped, his voice three octaves higher than normal.

Michelangelo obeyed and Donnie bit his knuckle and swallowed a sob, trying not to cringe away from the burn. He counted. One…two…three…

"Okay. Okay!" he screeched finally.

The liquid fire stopped flowing and he took a minute to catch his breath and wipe the wet from his face.

"Okay," he said again, this time breathlessly. "Now, what does it look like?"

"Donnie—I can't."

"Yes you can."

"I'm gonna throw up."

"Not on me!" Donnie exclaimed. "If you absolutely must, then do it in the toilet. If I have to give myself another vaccination, you will be very _very_ hurt, do you understand?"

"Yes," said Mikey's voice thickly.

It wasn't a second later that he was tossing the first aid kit on the floor and retching into the porcelain bowl. Donnie frowned but did not look back over his shoulder or move from where he sat. Instinctively, were he not injured and in such a bad mood, he would kneel next to his ill little brother and pat a consoling hand on his shell. He'd been doing it for years. Mikey had an unbeatably strong stomach for the most bizarre kinds of food, but when it came to blood and guts and broken bones in his face and personal, he could not hold down his pizza to save his life—which was unfortunate, because between the four of them, Mikey and his brothers procured more injuries than a squadron of soldiers in the middle of a war…They _were _a squadron of soldiers in the middle of a war.

"I'm sorry bro," he moaned.

"It's okay," Donnie responded patiently. "Just wash your hands when you're done."

"No, I mean I'm _sorry_—for that stupid prank I pulled. What if you get sick—"

"There's no way you could've accounted for an open wound when you planned your joke Mikey," Donnie interrupted firmly. "You didn't know all this would happen. It's fine."

"But it's not," the little turtle exclaimed. "You could die bro!"

Donnie let out a patient breath through his nose. "That's incredibly unlikely Michelangelo. Don't worry about that. I was just joking before. Worst case scenario, I get sick and have to swallow horse pills for a week or two. I'm not going to die. I wouldn't let myself."

Don finally looked over his shoulder when Mickey said nothing. His little brother was sitting on the floor, leaning against the side of the toilet, staring at Donatello with slightly glossy eyes and a crease in his orange mask where the ridges of his brow met. Pity? Donnie thought. He didn't want it to be. He didn't want to be singled out as feeble and pathetic. He was already singled out as the one who couldn't hold his own, couldn't accurately throw back an insult when he was given a verbal challenge. If he ever tried, it usually resulted in a flustered babble that no one could understand anyway, and then he ended up looking even more pitiful. It just opened him up as an easy target for teasing—even Leo and Mikey liked to poke fun at him sometimes. If they were going to push him around he'd rather they not try to turn back and feel sorry for him all of a sudden.

But Mikey's expression…There was something about it that turned his stomach inside out and made him want to get out of the tub and hold his little brother.

"What is it Mikey?" he asked instead, his voice soft.

Those blue eyes blinked and dropped to the floor as though Mikey had only just realized he'd been staring. He shook his head absently and mumbled, "Raph's a jerkwad."

There was no anger in the little turtle's voice, no hatred, no hint of an insult really. It was like he was saying it because he felt like he should, like he had to tell himself this to really understand the truth behind it. He really didn't _want_ Raph to be a 'jerkwad,' that's what his eyes said. He was sad, and Donnie thought he understood.

There was no question that Raph had always been somewhat of an idol to Michelangelo, a role model. Mikey had always looked up to him like he was a superhero—_his_ superhero. To this day he still tried to follow Raphael wherever he went, threw his arms around him whenever he found an opening, and lit up like a firecracker whenever dark, brooding Raph stepped into the room. True, he liked to get under Raph's skin, but Donnie suspected this was the only way Mikey felt he could fully get his red-clad brother's attention. And it worked.

In his eyes now was the sad realization that his hero was indeed a jerkwad. He was like a little boy discovering that Batman killed for pleasure or that Spiderman like to perch on rooftops and watch nasty little teenagers steal balloons from toddlers. There was a certain light to his eyes that was dimming, quickly, but doing its best to hang in there and keep from being snuffed out. No, Raphael was not Donnie's favorite person in the world right now, but the third eldest turtle felt an overpowering desire to guard his baby brother from corruption. It didn't matter if Mikey was blissfully unaware of the darkness in the world, as long as he was blissful—as long as he remained innocent and got to light up like a firecracker whenever his favorite brother walked into the room.

"Sometimes," Donnie said, nodding agreeably. "But he's not a bad person. He's just—complicated…and angry…He did save Leo's life twice tonight."

"Yeah, but not _yours_," Mikey said flatly.

Donnie frowned. "Well, it's like he said Mike, he's only one turtle. And think, if he _hadn't_ gone after Leo, our favorite, pompous leader might be in worse shape than I am." He smiled lightly.

Mikey blinked but did not smile back. "But I don't get it."

"Don't get what?"

"If his beef is with Leo, why did he attack _you_?

Donnie didn't have an answer and he could feel something squirming in his chest. The nerves connected throughout his shell were still throbbing and it seemed as though the pain only intensified.

"I—don't know Mikey. But don't worry about it. It's Raph. It's just…" He shrugged. "It's Raph."

Mikey pursed his lips and sighed. "Yeah I know. I just feel bad about everything he said and slapping you and then I…That stupid prank." He shook his head. "You worked your shell off tonight and we totally should've been patting you on the back but no one did."

Donnie released a small but genuine smile. That declaration in itself was a nice enough pat on the back for him. "You worked your shell of too Mikey. I'm proud of you, and I didn't thank _you_ for saving _my_ shell. So thanks."

The corners of Mikey's mouth finally lifted.

There were no smiles like Mikey's smile. It was constant, dependable, and infectious—a wild spark of flamboyant happiness that no one could ever understand or duplicate. This was the first time Donnie was ever aware of how important that smile was, because when it wasn't there…everything just seemed hopeless. But he couldn't verbalize this. He couldn't tell his little brother how much it meant and so he blinked and cleared his throat.

"But you're not done yet, so get over here," he said, gesturing for his brother to return to the tub before facing the wall again.

Michelangelo did exactly as he was told. He didn't throw up anymore.


	16. Chapter 16

The right corner of his mouth lifted as he watched Donnie take a big bite of his cupcake and managed to smear frosting on the tip of his nose. He smiled even wider when the freshly-masked turtle let slip one of those accidental giggles he did whenever he ate something that was truly appealing to him. Donnie stuffed the rest of his cake in his mouth, making sure to lick the tips of his fingers once it was gone.

They were sitting next to each other on the couch watching _A Beautiful Mind_ because that was one of Donnie's favorite movies. Mikey himself had no idea what it was about even after being forced to watch it about five times since April had introduced it to his older brother. All he knew was that the main guy was supposed to be some kind of genius or something, and then in the end you find out he's actually delusional and schizophrenic. Mikey found it kind of boring; he didn't take much to dramas, but this was about cheering Donnie up, and so he'd been the one to suggest it after presenting his brother with his personalized cupcake. It was a relief to see his purple-banded brother smiling so normally. He'd been afraid that he and Raph had caused their brother some serious damage.

He had never heard Donatello crying as intensely as he was only a few hours ago.

But he seemed fine now, sitting with his legs crossed on the couch, shell properly cleaned and bandaged, picking crumbs from his palm and glancing up at the screen.

Leo jumped on the couch then, plopping down on Donnie's right with a weak, hiccupped laugh. "Do I get one?" he asked, tenderly wiping the frosting off of Donnie's beak and looking to Mikey with tired eyes that didn't entirely parallel the faint smile in his cheeks.

"Yeah, I totally made you one," Mikey beamed, hopping up. At least Leo wasn't seeping out cold hatred anymore.

It was when Mikey began bouncing toward the kitchen that he noticed Raph standing in the shadows under the archway leading to their rooms.

He didn't seem aware that the youngest had spotted him. His face held a stony frown and his eyes were a glittering green narrowed in the direction of Leo and Donnie sitting on the couch. Mikey glanced at his cool-colored brothers, then back at Raph, then at Leo and Donnie, and then at Raph again.

He wasn't an idiot—not like Raph constantly liked to remind him. And neither was Raph as tough and hard-shelled as he claimed to be.

When Mikey looked at Raph a fourth time, those green eyes finally met his blue. He didn't look away, didn't pretend that he hadn't been watching and didn't know exactly what Raph was thinking. Raphael didn't like that. His eyes narrowed even further and he turned his shell to his brother and retreated back into his room.

* * *

_*Leo's POV*_

The lair was quiet for multiple days and he was running out of things to keep himself occupied. He could only train for so long before his muscles started to quiver and give out and hate him for being so hard on them. He didn't like to listen to their whining though; he wanted to keep practicing. Next to meditation, it was the best remedy for his troubled mind. And since lately he hadn't been able to focus on meditation, he automatically reverted to working himself dry. But, as mentioned before, he could only push himself for so long. After only two days of nearly uninterrupted exercise, he was wasted. The third morning found him unable to even roll out of bed. And he missed that day's training session because he'd already been training so hard the past couple of days. And Splinter didn't even bother him about it.

This frustrated him. He'd been sure that if he laid there long enough then his father would eventually come knocking on the door to ask what was "troubling him." But the rat never made an appearance. Instead he sent Michelangelo around lunch time with a giant bowl of pizza noodle soup and four grilled pepperoni and cheese sandwiches.

Leo was slightly angry at this. Why was his sensei avoiding him? They'd spent all that time talking a couple of days ago and Splinter had _assured_ him that he wasn't disappointed. He'd said this though, without letting Leonardo speak any more about what was truly bothering him. He had hoped that all the conversation would have reawakened his father and called him back out of his room, out of the dojo, out of meditation and back into the real world where his sons needed him. But Splinter was just as reclusive as ever. In fact, when Leo _had_ made it to training, Splinter had simply sat beneath the tree and watched in silence, only commenting on poor stances and loose elbows in a quiet monotone voice when he felt it was necessary, as Leonardo basically led the lesson himself.

The blue-banded leader didn't want to be the teacher; that was his sensei's job. He didn't want to coax a confession out of Raph; that was his sensei's job too. He didn't even _want_ to be the leader anymore. What was the point? They weren't allowed to leave the lair. Donnie was injured and now the Foot wanted him and Splinter did not approve of Mikey, Raph, and Leo leaving the lair without him. Why? Because Raph and Leo would cause trouble for each other? Because Donnie was an essential part of the team and half the reason they always managed to make it home? Because Leonardo had disappointed his father?

Was Splinter reevaluating Leonardo's leadership skills, even after having mentioned that Leo had a talent for it? He probably didn't trust the blue-banded turtle as much as he had before. He was probably waiting for Donnie to heal so that there would be a level head indirectly leading the team, because Mikey couldn't lead anything and Raph was still far too angry at the world. Maybe that was why Splinter wasn't talking to Leonardo, maybe he wanted to distance himself first so that when he told Leo that he wanted Donnie to replace him as the leader it wouldn't be as big of a blow.

Or maybe Splinter was just depressed and maybe Leo was paranoid, and restless, and angry too.

He was trying to stay mellow with his brothers. When Mikey brought him his lunch, he had allowed his little brother to sit on the end of his bed for a while and steal one of his sandwiches as he talked his ear off. He was constantly in and out of the lab, checking on Donnie, asking him how he felt…But maybe he wasn't always so interested in the answer. He just wanted to know if the retro-mutagen was finished. The sooner it was complete, the sooner they could continue their search for Karai—with or without Donnie. Leo wasn't going to let Splinter hold him back. He already was, just by muttering that he wanted Donatello to take it easy, not to strain himself.

Sure Leo understood that Donnie had his limits too, but did it really have to take so long to make retro-mutagen? Hadn't Donnie already done it once? Did he not remember how to do it? Why was it taking so long?

And they all had to makes sacrifices. Splinter had specifically told Leonardo once that their mission to stop the Kraang from taking over the city had to be completed no matter what or _who_ they had to sacrifice, and Leo had done just that—sacrificed himself. But now Splinter was worried because Donnie had a crack in his shell and had to sit in his lab for hours pouring liquids into beakers?

Donnie had his limits—Leo understood that. But he was also incredible. Raph was right—even as sarcastically as he had put it—Donnie was painfully perfect. He'd be fine.

And speaking of Raph, Leo wasn't talking to him. And it wasn't necessarily out of anger that he kept his distance, though there was some part of him that would always be angry with Raph. He more stayed away because he didn't know how to go about getting Raph to talk to him, because certainly _Raph_ wasn't making an effort to amend their continuously severing bond. That was another thing Leo was somewhat bitter with his sensei about. How could he expect so much of Leo? Splinter knew how to get through to Raph when he needed to, why was he tasking Leonardo with this impossibility? The blue-banded turtle did not want to talk to his brother…So he didn't.

And they stayed in the lair and time continued to pass and he could feel himself becoming strained with stress and anxiety and just wanting to be free of this constant worry for him and his family, but mostly for Karai. Every hour that went by he became more and more convinced that she had been snatched up by Tigerclaw and the Foot. They were holding her captive and what would they do to her? Could they do anything? Were they keeping her locked in a cage like the Kraang had? Were they performing tests on her, trying to brainwash her? What were they using to subdue her?

It all made him shudder. This was taking too long. They needed to resurface.


	17. Chapter 17

**So I know we haven't _seen _April up until this point, but Donnie does need her DNA for the retro-mutagen and I thought, "What a perfect way to sneak in an Apritello moment." So, you're welcome :) I could not resist. **

**Disclaimer: The song "Hush Now" is by Over the Rhine and I actually discovered it through another TMNT fanfiction piece that I unfortunately can't remember the name of, but it sure was adorable! Anyway, the song's been stuck in my head so I was like, "We're gonna do something with this." So here you go!**

**Also, I might as well reiterate that none of these characters are mine either cuz it was a good 16/17 chapters ago that I mentioned that.**

**Okay, house-keeping his done; now enjoy a little calm before the storm :)**

* * *

He blinked his eyes rapidly, trying to clear away the blur. How many hours straight had it been now since he'd last slept—eighteen, twenty, had it been a whole day yet?

He glanced at the clock and noticed that it, yet again, had stopped ticking and was sticking out its tongue through a lopsided smile, spitting in his general direction. He gritted his teeth and looked away from it, glancing over at April instead. She was on the other side of the table sitting on his stool, her chin in her hand, watching him.

When their eyes met he felt a warm blush flare up in his cheeks and immediately looked away. He pressed his eye against the ocular and adjusted the knobs on the microscope to define the cell image. The smear of microorganisms staining the petri dish this time was April's. His second ever batch of retro-mutagen was almost complete. He just needed to verify the genetic make-up of her cellular code and make sure the mutagen compound he'd been messing around with for over a month still reacted positively to her DNA. After that it was simply a matter of proficiently mixing in the right amount of genetic material.

The only problem was he was tired—like extremely tired. And his head hurt, and there was an itch spreading out along the crack in his shell, and he was thirsty, and he didn't want to work but he was so close. He couldn't stop now, not so near to being finally finished with the cure that would save his family's life.

The past four or five days had been more or less a nightmare. It was so quiet in the lair now. There was so much strain, even despite all of Mikey's attempts to make _someone_ laugh or to gather them all in the common room for a movie or to even all sit down for dinner like they hadn't done in weeks now. Karai's absence had taken a serious toll on them, and now the cost was even greater because they had gotten to the point of trying to blame each other.

He was used to arguments brewing and rolling in a constant drum around the lair, as though to their own rhythmic cadence. Stupid things like the culprit behind a missing comic book, or the asshole who ate the last slice of pizza, or about whose turn it was to reload the Shellraiser with manhole covers and compressed trash. He was even used to slightly bigger arguments such as Raph's issue with the matter of Mikey's complete incompetency, or Leo's sometimes-pompous attitude, or everyone else's annoyance with Donnie's sometimes-explosive experiments.

This silence—he was not used to, and he did not enjoy it as much as he might've thought he would. Because it was the kind of silence no one could breathe through.

He futilely scratched at his shell and then leaned against the table with his palms, taking his face out of the microscope to hang his head for a moment and close his eyes with a long, heavy sigh.

"Alright Donnie?" April asked.

He blinked at her with a nod and stood up straight again. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'm just…" But he didn't go on. He had no other words to fill that gap.

"Did you sleep last night?"

He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Um…I don't think so."

Her eyebrows pulled together. "Maybe you should go get some rest Donnie."

"No." He shook his head more intently now. "I'm fine, I just—I really don't want to work on this right now," he said with a breathless chuckle.

Never would he have believed those words had enough life to leave _his_ tongue. He couldn't recall a time that he was so eager not to be tinkering, or mixing compounds, or fabricating life-changing inventions—and to give that up in exchange for sleep? It was so un-Donatello-like that he began to wonder what he should call himself.

April spared a sympathetic smile and slid off the stool to walk around the table and lean against it nearer where he stood. She hugged her torso loosely. "So take a break then." She shrugged.

"I can't," he sighed. "I have to…" He cleared his throat. "I have to get this done."

"Donnie, I'm sure it can wait like two hours—"

"No," he said, snapping his head to her. He laughed the least humorous laugh that had probably ever been coughed up. "You don't understand what's been like down here. I…I can't _breathe_. No one is talking to anybody. Splinter won't come out of his room. Raph hasn't cooled down yet. Leo's getting impatient and he keeps coming in here asking me when the retro-mutagen will be finished…I _can't_ sleep," he exclaimed. "And I know I won't be able to until this is done—until we have Karai and she's human and this is all over, and I can stop pretending to…" He sealed away his last words and breathed unsteadily for a moment as April watched him with a slightly anxious, blue gaze.

He wiped a hand down his face and it came away slightly moistened. He cleaned the sweat from his forehead and cleared his throat again. His eyes stared down at the edge of the table, lost in a fog of pressing obligations, of everything in the world screaming to be fixed and to be fixed right _now_. He pushed the microscope out of the way and dropped his face into his hands with a moan, leaning his elbows on the table. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fingers into his temples.

"If I could just not have to be _me_ for _one_ minute," he groaned.

April's hand lightly rested on the lip of his shell and he counted the passing of four heartbeats before she gently tugged him off of the table, ushering him to stand straight again. When he was looking down at her with exhausted eyes, she smiled and released his shell to curl her fingers around his own.

His heart stuttered and he suddenly wasn't as tired as he remembered being only a second ago. Her hand was so small. The whole thing could really only fit around one of his fingers, but it had this mystical touch, a power that awakened his muscles and called his hand to hold hers in return.

She tugged him toward his computer and used her free hand to pull up YouTube. She typed in "Hush Now"—Over the Rhine, and turned up the volume on the speakers. An appeased smile lifted her freckled cheeks as the song drifted around the room, beginning with a piano in three-four time. She towed him now toward the center of his lab, took up his other hand and stepped closer. If he couldn't breathe before, it was nothing compared to now. He was surprised she couldn't hear his pulse hammering beneath his plastron.

"April—"

"Shh," she said, flashing him a warning glance before smiling and singing, "Hush now my sweet little noisy boy/ There's trouble enough in the world…"

She stepped forward, forcing him to take a step back, and her smile widened as he consented to follow her in a waltz-like dance, spinning in wide circles around the lab. For a moment, he stared down at his feet, heart pounding now in his ears, just hoping that he didn't flub this moment by stepping on her foot or tripping over his own—something he was very prone to do.

"Pick up your feet little lazy boy/ Come dance with your little girl…"

He felt an indulgent twitch in his cheek. He had never really heard her sing before. She wasn't the next Whitney Houston or anything, but her voice was sweet enough, it stayed on key, it moved with the song, and he felt it touch his every nerve and smooth out the creases, like delicate hands un-wrinkling a sheet of paper on a table top. He started to relax. He forgot about the retro-mutagen, forgot about his headache, forgot his exhaustion, his brothers, his sensei, and Karai. It was just him and April now, spinning around his lab with a grace he never even knew _himself_ to be capable of.

He met her cerulean gaze and realized he was smiling just as wide as she was, and he didn't have to look at his feet anymore. He kept his eyes solely on her, letting his body do what it felt was right in the moment, twirling her under his arm, stepping to and away from her, holding her waist securely in his hand, almost like he actually knew what he was doing.

"But make me a little bit dizzy boy/ Swing me on your trapeze. When I'm in the arms of my dreamy boy/ It still makes me weak in the knees…"

Even in the excitement of _dancing _with April O'Neil, the lyrics did not escape him. They rose chill bumps on his arms and sent his mind reeling. Was she really just trying to ease his stress or was she telling him something? Why _this_ song? What did it mean to her, to him, for _them_? But he didn't want to think. He wanted to be in the moment. And he didn't want to hike up his hope. How did he know she wasn't simply being sweet, humoring his affection for her for now so that he could have his moment? Who was to say this would last?

He thought of his conversation with Leo a couple of weeks ago, of what he'd once said about it being easier to hope in vain. This _wouldn't_ last. He knew that. So he decided to be _there_, in that specific time and place, and forget thinking. He didn't want to be Donatello right now. He didn't want to live in his obligation to fix things, in the promises he'd made to his family. He didn't want to live in his lab; he wanted to _dance_ in it. He _wanted_ to be April's Donny-Boy, her "dreamy boy."

"Come now my sweet little breathing boy/ I'm listening hard to your heart  
It's as strong as a lion's boy/ Let's live here and make a new start

I remember once you said/ 'Lying in this bed the past is dead'  
Everyday is a one-act play/ Without an ending, without an ending."

Their mesmerizing waltz slowed and April took a step back, stretching their arms out between them, crossed her ankles and dipped her head with a curtsy in time with the last chime of the piano. He let go of her left hand, held his right arm across his plastron and bowed. She giggled and graced him with a charmed smile, as though he was actually good at filling the role of the gentleman. He wondered if he should kiss the back of her hand. He could play it off as courtesy, his civic duty _as_ the gentleman to flatter such an amazing young woman. But the door opened before he could actually consider the motion of bringing her hand to his lips.

It was Leo.

He and April had already released their hold on each other, and Donnie could feel an emptiness growing in his palm where her hand had just been. It webbed out through his veins, traveled up his arm, and filtered into his chest, filling him with something almost reminiscent of anger. This was maybe the fourth time today that Leonardo had nearly broken down his lab door, and the _only _time that he had come in at a moment that Donatello was not slaving away on the retro-mutagen. The_ only_ time, and it had to be when he was inside the special bubble he reserved specifically for moments with April. A bubble of sanctity where she pulled tranquility out of thin air and instilled it in his blood with a mere smile—a bubble that his eldest brother had just popped.

No one said anything for a long time. April and Donnie stood hardly two feet apart, holding their hands to themselves and trying not to glance at each other while Leonardo hovered in the doorway glancing between the two of them with half-guarded, half-hurt eyes as though he'd somehow just been betrayed. Donnie felt himself biting the inside of his lip and looking more toward the floor, cheeks burning.

"How's it going?" Leo said finally, his voice breaking the silence in a very slight but sharp kind of way, like breaking a twig.

Donnie blinked back up at him. "Hm?"

"The retro-mutagen," Leo said, gazing at Donnie with blue eyes that very clearly said with a voice of their own, "What the fuck are you doing?"

"Oh." Donnie cleared his throat and took a quick peek at April who wore a strained smile. It was nice actually, to see that she too was clearly not all that partial to his brother's interruption. "It's going fine."

Leo nodded distantly. "How long do you think until it's done?"

April dropped her gaze to the floor and Donnie clenched his teeth to keep the frustration at bay. It was the same question he'd heard over and over again for weeks, and it was only getting harder to sympathize with Leo and accept his impatience.

"I uh…" He paused for a sneeze that brought his headache back to life. He closed his eyes for a moment then looked toward his makeshift lab table as though calculating out an answer. "Well, it depends on the stabilization of the—"

"I need a time Donnie."

It was Leo's cold-cut tone that drew Donnie's gaze. "I don't know," he responded.

"Make a guess," Leo ordered, practically through his teeth.

Donnie pressed his lips together and shook his head, yet again unable to meet his brother's eyes. "I don't know…I-I guess if I get back to work on it right away then—figuring in time for percent error—ten hours…eight if everything works out the way it's supposed to, _assuming_ there are no major setbacks that is."

Leo nodded, satisfied. "Then you should probably get back to work on it."

Donnie stared across the room at his brother and oh how he wished he could say something, raise his voice, shout, scream, throw a full-on tantrum and vow never to fix anything for his brothers ever again. But that wasn't who he was, that wasn't how _Donatello_ acted—how he was supposed to act, _expected_ to act. It wasn't in his fervor. And he liked Leo; he felt sorry for Leo; he _wanted_ to help Leo. But dammit if that blue-banded turtle wasn't being a pain in the shell right now…

"Leo," April said softly. "Don't you think that—"

Donnie placed a hand on her shoulder to cut off the rest of her sentence and gave her an assuring smile. He appreciated that she wanted to argue in his defense, that she was willing to stick up for his right to a moment of respite, but, as reluctant as he was to accept Leo's demanding tone, he understood. Leonardo was having a harder time than Donnie was finding a moment of peace in this constant strain, in this silence that had settled upon their family. He could not be pacified by a ginger hand on his shell and the freckled smile of a beautiful girl, especially seeing as _his_ "April O'Neil" was the subject of the strain. Until Karai was home and in her human form, Leo would _continue_ to bust down the lab door and demand that no one rest, because there was nothing else that he could do. He had become a desperate turtle—rest was out of the question.

So Donnie nodded once at his brother and walked back over to his lab table to finish the retro-mutagen.

Leo continued to linger. "I have a plan to get Karai back," he said once he was satisfied with Donnie's return to productivity. "We're going to need your help April."

April's silent sigh was actually not as silent as she might've thought. Donnie could feel her eyes leaving his shell and looking to Leo. "Of course," she said returning a smile to her voice. "Anything I can do, just name it."


	18. Chapter 18

**I feel like this part took FOREVER - had to fight off some writer's block, but I won out :) **

**So this is where the plot gets a little itchy. I'll try not to make you wait too long for the next chapter. Review of course! I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed reading your comments so far :D  
**

**Oh and very unlike our favorite blue-banded leader, ****I'm not an expert strategist****. If you find plot holes...Yeah, I'm sorry. Feel free to call me out I guess. Otherwise, enjoy!**

* * *

A seed was planted.

April and Casey sought out the Purple Dragons and made sure to have a particularly loud conversation about the turtles continuing their search for Karai in Chinatown on Thursday night. The always predictable and dependable thugs were then to deliver the message to the Foot Clan. The Shredder would put his right-hand man on the job, which meant the foreseeable lie-low-in-the-shadows-and-jump-out-when-the-turtles-are-unsuspecting plan would not exist.

Tigerclaw would hide himself out in the open and bring exactly what the young ninjas were desperate for, making himself easily and immediately spotted. Once the turtles found him he had only to propose a trade: Karai for the retro-mutagen. At that point, it wouldn't matter if the turtles suspected deception because they would be outmatched and surrounded, not only by the feline assassin, but by Rahzar, Fishface, Stockman-fly, and about fifty Footbots that would have been hiding in the shadows up until that point. They would be sure to take as many trophies with them as they could catch and carry.

Leonardo had spent nearly a week mulling this over and was sure he had come up with a solution.

Since the introduction of Tigerclaw, the turtles—or more specifically Leo and Donnie—had been keeping track of Tigerclaw's movements and where he liked to show his face. As preemptive as the giant cat probably believed he was, they had managed to find a pattern.

Leonardo knew exactly where Tigerclaw would be waiting with Karai, and furthermore, he knew where the Footbots would most likely be stationed in the area. With this information he was able to plot out two blind spots and the routes to them that would keep his team out of sight without obscuring their own view of Tigerclaw and Karai.

The squad would be split. It was the tactical "misdirection and camouflage" slant. One duo would act as the diversion by permanently taking Tigerclaw out of the equation, leaving the second duo enough time to swoop in during the rush, grab Karai, and head for the nearest manhole with as little interaction with the enemy as possible.

It had been made painfully clear during the detailing of this plan that whoever was to be a member of the diversion duo would be putting themselves at a serious disadvantage. Therefore, Leonardo had automatically marked his place in one of the two positions. Determining who was to fill the other took a solid hour of debate.

Mikey was a skilled master of distraction, but he was entirely too loud and would get himself spotted before the plan could even go underway. Moreover, he was the fastest turtle among them and therefore better suited for the task of getting Karai out of the way quickly.

Raph could handle anything that attacked after the attention was drawn, but his and Leo's compatibility was entirely too precarious to make that pairing actually work. He was also very brash and impatient; he couldn't digest the concept of taking one's time in order to get the job done in one shot—which was all that they had.

Donatello wasn't even supposed to be leaving the lair. He was injured, sapped, and the very thing that the Foot required, but Leonardo could not convince him to stay out of the game.

"If I'm exactly what they're after, then that'll draw their entire offense and give Raph and Mikey more time to get Karai out of there."

"Donnie," Leo said, shaking his head. "You're too vulnerable. You've still got that crack in your shell; you're not going to be able to fight them all off."

"Leo it's been a week. It'll be uncomfortable but I _can_ still move as well as I could before."

"But what if you can't?" Mikey asked, a concerned crease in his mask.

Donnie's response was a sneeze.

"If he can't then he's going to get snatched by the Foot and we'll have to do this all over again," Raph said with a detectable frown in his eyes, though he was glaring at nothing in particular.

"I'm not a helpless animal!" Donnie exclaimed. "I can do this."

"When was the last time you slept Donnie?" Leo asked, in what sounded suspiciously like a rhetorical question.

Donnie shot a glare at him through eyes rimmed with shadows half-hiding beneath his mask. He looked as though he'd been punched twice in the face. "Don't start acting like that concerns you _now._"

"But dude, he's got a point."

"Shut it Mikey."

The youngest blinked, having not expected Donatello's gruff defensiveness. He didn't say anything after that.

"Donnie, we're not going to risk it; you're too valuable to them. You're too valuable to _us_," Leo said.

Donatello's glower intensified.

The eldest brother sighed. "We didn't have your back before," he said matter-of-factly, nodding at the look in Donnie's eyes. "I know. We're sorry. Let us do something about that now."

"I'm not weak," said the purple-banded turtle, quietly but definitively.

"We're not saying—"

"I'm not weak!" he shouted. He coughed the rasp out of his throat and continued. "Leo, I'm the best archer we have. If we're going to do it this way, you need me with you. You only get _one_ shot, and I'll draw all their attention after that. It's the best option we have. I won't let them take me. And even if they manage to, they can't do anything to me, not if they want the retro-mutagen. If this plan works, you'll have Karai. You can change her back into a human, and you'll have her help when you come back for me—if you even need to. And at that point they will have lost their chance to take control of her. It's worth it Leo."

Leonardo gazed for a long time at Donatello, giving no inclination as to which way he was being swayed, though it was pretty clear to everyone, Donnie was one-hundred percent correct—as always. Mikey watched his brothers, anxiously awaiting the final answer. And Raph sat in silence with his arms crossed, closed off, pretending that he wasn't waiting as intensely as the rest of them.

When one full, silent minute had passed, Donnie gritted his teeth. "Leo…Do you want Karai back or not?"

* * *

They waited until they were sure their sensei was in his deepest level of mediation—a state heavier than sleep—so far gone that even waving a cheese-cicle an inch before his nose did not prompt a reaction. Only then did they deem it safe enough to escape what had been a week-long prison.

Leo knew, upon glancing over his shoulder from the doorway of the Shellraiser, that if they did not return with Splinter's daughter, they might as well not return at all. They were already forfeiting a solid month of surface time, maybe two, not to mention several predictably painful rounds of randori, and that was with the frail hope that Karai's rescue would ease the old rat's fury for their blatant disobedience—assuming of course, that they even made it home to begin with. It was a sickening thought, that Splinter might open his eyes to an empty lair that would remain that way without his ever truly knowing what had happened to his sons. As bitter and angry as he had been with Splinter for the past week, Leo was no more eager to further break his father's heart than he had been a week ago.

The ride was short. They were only moving the Shellraiser up to the surface as a backup plan. They could not risk driving it through the perimeter of ninjas that would be waiting for them; they had to stay out of sight. So three blocks from the lair, the Shellraiser was backed and concealed in an alley close to Casey's apartment so that he could keep an eye on it and would be handy if the turtles showed up in a rush and needed his backup.

From there they traveled on foot.

They risked taking the grounded route, because hopping on rooftops would earn them immediate visibility. They kept to the shadows of street and alleyways and moved swiftly without leaving any other evidence that they had passed than maybe a slight breeze.

As they approached the dividing point, Leo's heart did an unmistakable skip and he spared a glace for each one of his brothers.

All three were silent—in such a way that Leo almost felt a twinge of pride. They knew this was serious and none of them wanted to be the one that screwed it up. He vaguely wondered which of them, if not all, also thought about Splinter's potential reaction if they did not make it home with Karai, or what was worse, if they did not make it home at all. He knew this was something that had to have passed through their minds a few times since that first night out in the daunting city now more than a year ago. But until this point, for the most part, they had all remained almost childishly optimistic, as though the possibility of not making it back to their father had never crossed their minds as something that could actually happen.

Leo wasn't afraid per se; he just wanted to know that he wasn't alone in thinking these things.

Surprisingly, it was the glance he shared with Michelangelo that confirmed this. After that, he kept a flat countenance. If his brothers caught even a scent of doubt in their leader, they would panic.

The four young ninjas ducked into an alleyway at the very edge of Chinatown. Still keeping to the shadows, they caught their breath for a moment and exchanged glances between one another.

"Does _anyone_ need me to go over the plan again?" Leo asked, looking specifically toward Mikey.

The youngest turtle bit his lip, looked to Raph, as though searching their red-banded brother for confirmation of his own understanding, then shook his head.

"You sure?" Raph drawled half-sarcastically with a raised brow.

"I got this," Mikey said assuredly.

Leo believed him. "Alright. Then this is where we split. If _anything _goes wrong, forget the plan and head for the Shellraiser. If we can't take Tigerclaw out…just get out of there. Got it?"

Donnie and Mikey nodded once. Raph kept his eyes on the ground. Leo held his gaze on his truculent brother for a moment.

"Raph."

Raphael looked up to his leader with deadened eyes. There was no emotion to his expression whatsoever, and that was frightening.

"You good?" Leo asked.

A glint of annoyance reflected off of his green eyes. "I'm fine," he grumbled.

Leo nodded. "Take care of Mikey okay?"

Raph shot a quick glance at the little turtle who was now anxiously bouncing on the balls of his feet, blue eyes jumping between his teammates and landing on whoever was expected to speak next.

"Yeah." Raph rolled his eyes back on Leo. "This is your last chance to switch up the teams Fearless. I'm a little worried that Sneezy over there is going to give away your position." He nodded his head once to Donnie who was in the middle of brushing his arm across his beak after having just stifled a sneeze.

Donnie narrowed his eyes and straightened his back, slightly raising his chin. "Don't worry about me Raph."

"I'm not," Raph shot back with a cool attitude.

Leo stepped between them before something could brew. "Just stick to the plan Raph," he said as clearly as he could. "And don't make _any_ moves before Tigerclaw goes down."

Raph rolled his eyes and started walking away. "Aye aye Cap," he droned satirically, grabbing the top of Mikey's arm and pulling him toward the fire escape.

A simmer of anxiety bubbled up in Leo's chest. The ominous cloud started to roll in. "Keep an eye out for Footbots you guys. Stick to the path I told you."

"We've got it Leo!" Raph hissed, snapping a glare over his shoulder.

When he looked away again, Leo could've sworn he heard his brother mumble something along the lines of, "Just take your boyfriend and get to your spot before I blow the whole damn operation."

The leader spent no time on this. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. Raph and Mikey were already practically on the roof.

Leonardo turned to his remaining brother. "Come on Donnie."

It took the two of them hardly five minutes to reach their position beneath short-circuited, fifteen-foot, metal-framed Chinese symbols, meeting no more resistance than Leo had expected to along the way. When they were sure there were no more Footbots around to leap at them from the shadows, they crouched low and simultaneously peeked over the ledge of the building.

Leo's stomach morphed into an active beehive, as though someone had poked his plastron and agitated the little winged insects inside.

It wasn't until his eyes took in the full sight of Tigerclaw and Rahzar flanking a giant, coiled white snake and accompanied by about twenty Footbots that Leo realized he hadn't had full faith in his own assumptions. It wasn't so much a surprise as it was a shove into the reality of their mission.

He realized now that he had neither truly expected nor doubted that Tigerclaw would indeed show up exactly where Leonardo had predicted—or what was more, that he would make an appearance at all. But he was there, accompanied by a crony, almost exactly as Leo had pictured it.

And they had Karai, the real, live, breathing, mutant Karai—no bags, no tricks. She was coiled tightly around herself on the rooftop, snake head resting on snake heads, eyes closed and unmoving. The only way he could tell she was breathing was from the slight shimmer of light on her scales as they moved.

A knot formed in his throat, but he forced himself to stay composed and scanned the area for Footbots. Once he spotted the first lingering in the shadows one building to their right, the rest were easy to make out. They were everywhere, cloaked in black and riddling the night like a page ripped out of an _I Spy_ book.

Leo checked behind him, but they had already silenced the sentries that were supposed to be covering their rooftop. They hadn't been spotted by any others.

He switched his gaze toward the left as Donnie silently slipped his favorite duffle bag off of his shoulder and extracted a bow, string, an arrow, tape, and a small explosive.

Squinting through the midnight screen, Leo could make out the silhouettes of twin water towers atop the building across the street where Mikey and Raph were supposed to be. He couldn't see his brothers, but this gave him more peace of mind than it did to disturb him; if he could not distinguish his brothers through the darkness than neither could the Foot.

Leo looked back toward his purple-banded brother and watched as he secured the small, cylindrical bomb just under the tip of the arrow. It was homemade, yes, but it would do the job it was supposed to. If anyone knew about explosives it was Donnie—who, conveniently, was also probably the only sentient being that could figure out how to make an effective explosive light-weight enough not to mess with the trajectory of an arrow.

Leo's eyes traveled to Donnie's face.

The mien under that purple mask was grim and opaque with shadows that specifically stained the tops of his cheeks just under the rim of his mask. Leonardo tried not to concern himself with the exhaustion screening Donnie's expression, and what was more, tried not to remind himself that he was a partial contributor to Donnie's lack of sleep. Only now that the retro-mutagen was complete and tucked safely away in the lair, while in the midst of carrying out his plan to finally get Karai back, could he clearly see the damage that had been both directly and indirectly inflicted on his younger brother.

It sickened him slightly that he hadn't noticed the droop of skin under Donnie's eyes, the off-shade of his normally olive-green complexion, the stiff way in which he moved. He hadn't even acknowledged the presence of bandages still cocooning Donnie's shell. Had he been that neglectful that he hadn't recognized the toll that lack of sleep coupled with an injury had taken on his diligent younger brother?

They should have left him home. The blue-banded leader should have put his foot down; told him no when Donatello had fought for the right to join the mission.

But now was not the time to fret over such a thing. Donnie was there with him now and they couldn't change that without blowing the operation out of the water.

"Okay," Donnie breathed after balancing the arrow on his finger. He turned his brown eyes on Leo. "We're ready."

Leo nodded once then signaled his brothers a rooftop away. He couldn't see Raph and Mikey, but he knew he and Donnie were visible to them. Seeing as no alarm had been sounded and no lights shined on the two assassins, Leo assumed that Raph and Mikey had effectively done their job.

This assumption was confirmed a minute later when he felt the near-silent vibration of his T-phone against the bridge of his shell. They were ready.

He nodded once to Donnie and spared a glance down at Tigerclaw and Rahzar who hadn't shown any signs of detection.

His heart began to beat anxiously against his plastron. He flicked his eyes back to Donnie who sat straight up on his knees, brought up his arms and expertly drew back on the bow, touching his thumb to his cheek.

Brown eyes intensely focused on his target, he neither adjusted his aim nor whispered for Leo to light the fuse on the explosive for a solid ten seconds.

At first, Leonardo only suspected Donnie was marking his objective with patience, remembering that they only had the one shot. But then it became clear that the expert archer was not going to give Leo the go ahead to light the fuse anytime soon.

Leo's eyes were quick to pick up on the cause even before his mouth could ask. They saw it, by the silhouette of the weapon in Donnie's hands, drawn back and ready to fire. It was quivering.

Leo followed the line of the arrow up to Donnie's fingers, across his arm and lingered on the space between Donnie's shoulder and shell. There was no denying the ripple of tremors engulfing his younger brother's body.

Donatello didn't seem to be breathing normally and a slight sheen of sweat had made it onto his forehead.

"Donnie," Leo spoke quietly.

Don's breath escaped him in a short burst, as though he had been harboring it behind his cheeks for the past thirty seconds. He relaxed his arms, pointing the tip of the arrow down at the rooftop, sniffed and wiped the perspiration from his face. When he pulled his hand away from his skin, he held it out in front of him and examined it with a narrowed gaze as the tremors took hold of his fingers.

Leo's stomach twisted with an ache of foreboding. "Donnie, you said you could do this."

The purple-clad turtle pressed his lips together and hung his head in silence, never sparing a glance toward his brother. "I'm sorry," he whispered hoarsely.

Leo blinked, his mind immediately switching tactics, and was careful not to make his exhale audible.

"Give it to me," he said, holding out his hand. "I'll do it. Just make sure I'm lined up."

Donnie obediently forfeited the bow and arrow and watched with miserable eyes as Leo adjusted the nock against the string and drew back.

He always forgot the size of his heart until moments like this, when it began to beat like a small fist on his plastron as though it were striking a punching bag. He forced his breathing to remain level but through the silence of the night it became insufferably loud. He didn't know if he was afraid or not. He could never tell. Always balancing on the cusp of patience and action he never knew if it was fear or adrenaline that made it five times as hard to stay composed.

His eyes flickered on Karai for a moment and he decided he _wasn't_ afraid. He couldn't be. There was no room to be. They had to get this done. It was time for her to come home. It was time for Splinter to smile again. It was time for Donnie to sleep and time for Raph stop being so angry. For his family—his _whole_ family—he would do this and he would do it right.

He narrowed his blue gaze on the back of Tigerclaw's head.

The mutant tiger was very gifted at keeping his stance that was for sure. He didn't give himself over to anxieties, to ticks, to habits that might've had him swaying or shuffling his feet during the wait. Only now would it become his downfall.

There was also the matter of his fur, bright orange and trimmed with white. He was like a traffic cone with reflective bands that lit like a lighthouse and cut through the blackness of the night. The city was no place for a jungle cat to blend in. Leo's shot was clear—and that was vitally important.

The success of this entire operation fully depended on the slaying of the tiger. Leonardo and his brothers had not once defeated Tigerclaw on their own, and he did not expect them to do so tonight without the element of surprise. The cat had to be eradicated or else they might as well tally another failure and expect never to see their sensei again.

"Donnie," he said, not taking his eyes away from the scarfed feline or letting the arrow drop. He drew the string tighter.

Donnie's response was to press himself against his brother, wrap an arm around his shell to take hold of his elbow and use his other hand to gingerly clasp Leo's wrist and tilt the angle of his aim.

Leonardo did not argue. He had full faith in Donatello's gift for precision, even despite his fatigue. He was indeed the best archer of the four of them, having been the first to graduate from plastic, suction cup sticks to real arrows at the age of seven. His quick ability to calculate angles, wind draft, and trajectory patterns with no more than a glance gave him the advantage. He never missed.

"I'm sorry for pushing you so hard," Leo whispered as he let his brother further adjust his posture. "You've been working nonstop, and I've only been asking you to do more."

"Don't worry about it," Donnie muttered.

"But I _am_ worried." Leo allowed himself a brief glance at his brother, whose face wasn't an inch from his own as those brown eyes did their best to see what Leo saw. "And as soon as we get home, I order you to get some sleep."

The corner of Donnie's mouth lifted and he chuckled so dryly that it almost sounded like a cough. "If all goes well, I'll call Splinter and tell him to heat up a glass of milk."

Despite the fusion of anxiety and adrenaline in the veins of the blue-banded turtle, he too managed a small smile.

* * *

_It should have been me_, he thought as he paced the edge of the building.

Leo had warned him and Mikey both that too much movement would attract attention, but he couldn't cope even with the _idea_ of standing so still. He twirled a sai in each hand, ready to make full use of them, and again repeated the thought. _It should have been me._

His lungs absorbed the statement, taking nourishment from it, and produced a quiet growl in his chest. _He_ should've been the one with Leo. He was just as good an archer as any; he was an even better fighter; and there was nothing privileged about Donnie anyway. Unless Leo was playing off of pity, yielding to their waning younger brother so that Donnie could have a chance to actually prove he wasn't weak, as he'd claimed. That or Leo was a spiteful jackass looking for any excuse to place Donnie where Raph should have been.

They were uniting against him. He felt it. He _knew_ it. He was slowly getting bumped out of his chair at the right-hand of Leo's throne by Donatello of all people.

Donnie was smart, resourceful, industrious, inventive, patient, and as absorbent as a sponge. He rarely lost his temper. He could play sympathy like a professional violinist. He kicked ass with a stick. And he was ninety percent of the reason they were all still breathing after a year of accumulating enemies. But there was _no_ way Leo could be allowed to pick Donnie over Raph…in _anything_.

As intelligent as he was, Donnie always botched the social game. He couldn't shut off his brain and either didn't get or didn't care that no one gave a flip about his factual ramblings. And furthermore, it was impossible to decipher his dialect seventy percent of the time, which raised the question of how Leo could even stand to have a conversation with him for more than five minutes at a time.

Donnie may have had certain aspects of a ninja, and while he _was_ skilled with a bo staff, he had a lack of aggressiveness that was essential to fighting, which was what put him in fourth place in the ranking of capable ninja turtles.

Raphael was the exact opposite of all of these things and therefore better suited to be where Donnie stood right now. So maybe he and Leo clashed. So maybe they couldn't find headway going down the same path. So maybe Raph was hot-tempered and rude and posed a challenge for his older brother. Wasn't that the point? This was Leo. He was the only one that could take Raph head-on and return the challenge. Despite being the one Raph never listened to, he was the only one Raph cared to listen to.

Fleshy green eyelids closed over those emerald eyes for a moment and he pressed his thumb on the crease of his mask.

Now he was just thinking in circles…So what if he couldn't find as many reasons to be paired with Leo as he could Donnie? (Strictly speaking about the mission of course.) He shouldn't have to anyway. He deserved that spot didn't he? He _had_ saved Leo's life multiple times. He'd spent years beating his brothers in training. He didn't understand why Leo had assigned him grab-and-go duty.

He didn't want to simply snatch up Karai and make a break for it. That wasn't gallant enough for him. He wanted a fight—a full on fight—with real flesh that he could skewer and bones that he could break. He was tired of fighting robots, it wasn't satisfying enough. And now Leo was asking him not to fight at all—to run? That wasn't going to cut it. He needed to expend his anger and kidnapping Karai wasn't going to help.

He sheathed his sais and pressed his palms against the ledge of the building, squinting through the shadows directly toward his leader.

Just as he was beginning to wonder what was taking them so long, Leo thrust a hand into the air.

"Finally," Raph breathed through his teeth. "Mike, send the message."

Mikey was sitting in a crook of beams beneath one of the water towers, drumming on his knee pad with his thumbs and bobbing his head. He had an earbud plugged into one ear and the fourth or fifth edition of Donnie's T-Pod stuffed into his belt. He didn't react to Raph's voice.

"Mikey!" the red-banded turtle hissed.

Those round blue eyes cut to him through the darkness and Mikey hastily tugged the bud out of his ear. "What? They ready?"

"No," Raph said sarcastically, rolling his eyes. "I was gonna ask if you wanted to order a pizza while we're waiting. Yes they're ready you dork! Send the message!"

"Okay, geez."

Mikey thumbed his T-phone and Raph looked back to his brothers and watched as Leo gave a quick nod and Donnie drew back the bow.

Raph's veins started to jump as his blood pumped faster. His green eyes flickered to where Tony the Tiger and his band of flakes were stupidly standing so still, then back to Donnie. He tightened his grip on the ledge. He could sense Mikey perching readily on the water tower now, like Raph, waiting for the chaos to being so that they could breech enemy territory and take back what they'd come for.

Multiple seconds passed and nothing changed.

"Did he do it yet?" Mikey whispered.

"Shut it."

Raph didn't take his eyes away. He waited, probably more patiently than he had ever waited on anything, whether because of choking anticipation or a sudden lack of awareness of his own body, he wasn't sure. But he waited and finally the bow lowered and Donnie's head dropped. There was no explosion, no yipping, no growls, no chaos.

Leo held out his hand and Raph kept his lips from parting as Donatello dropped the bow and arrow into the leader's open palm.

The red-banded terrapin scoffed, shaking his head to himself. "Sure you're not weak Donnie," he muttered under his breath.

"Raph, what's happening?"

"I said shut it Mike," he hissed.

He didn't turn to watch his baby brother poke out his bottom lip and stuff his arms across his plastron but he knew Mikey well enough to sense the pouting.

Leo was drawing back the bow now.

Why?

Was the pretentious leader insisting on being the hero tonight? Maybe he wanted to personally make up for their last disastrous mission. But hadn't Donnie's whole spiel about why he should be part of the diversion with Leo been centered in part around his unparalleled archery skills?

This only made Raph predictably angrier. So what had been the point of the argument then? Why couldn't Leo just have said, "You know what Raph, I like Donnie better so there"?

Raph's three-fingered hands curled into fists, pressing hard into the cement beneath his palms.

Donnie leaned into Leo, wrapped an arm around his shell and held his wrist, practically pressing their cheeks together.

Raphael would never—not in that moment nor any moment after the break of chaos—be able to explain the blinding objection he had to that scene.

He didn't like it.

He didn't like that Donnie's arms were encasing Leo. He didn't like that Leo was holding perfectly still as though accepting it. He didn't like that Leo had refused to give him that position in the first place. He didn't like that Leo and Donnie got along so well. He didn't like that Donnie could make Leo laugh. He didn't like that Leo had spent so much time with Donnie over the past month. And he _hated_ that he cared about it at all.

But he did.

And he was angry.

And he was even more unaware of his body than before. He didn't notice himself reaching down toward the graveled rooftop. He didn't notice his fist closing around a palm-sized rock. He didn't notice Mikey's questioning voice glancing off the back of his head. And he didn't notice himself drawing back his arm and sling-shoting the rock across the vacant street and over the next rooftop.


	19. Chapter 19

***sigh* Action is hard.**

* * *

With a faint flick of the wrist, he waved out the flame he'd used to light the fuse.

As Leo drew in a finalizing breath, Donnie took his hands away from his brother.

And it hit him, like a sharp punch to the face exactly where his cheek met his jaw. His head whipped to the side; his shoulder met Leo's with an aggressive shove. There was a grunt, a snap, and they were both on the cement.

Blinking dazedly, Donnie immediately pushed himself back up on his knees, shooting a glance toward the bow lying in Leo's open palm.

The arrow was gone.

His brown eyes fell on his brother who met his gaze with horror.

They scrambled to the ledge of the building and Donatello could feel the heavy plunk of his heart in the acids of his stomach as a flash of sparks flew across the rooftops.

Leo's hand was suddenly gripping his bicep with tight fingers, probably forcing bruises into his skin. Oddly, it was the erratic pulse in Leo's fingers that he felt, and it counted down the seconds for them.

Five…four…three…two…

It was like a crack of thunder kicking a steel-toed boot into each ear, leaving a high-pitched ringing hanging in the air. The explosion itself wasn't big, but it was impactful. It flared into a ball of white-hot fire then imploded on itself within the next second, leaving only a wispy black cloud that hovered five inches too far to the right and a foot too high. Sure it may have singed the fur on the tip of Tigerclaw's ear. But that was all it did.

The thunder intensified, only it didn't blast once and back down. It rumbled, deep, round, and full, expanding the atmosphere to the point that the extra ferocity jumped into every cemented building within a ten block radius and shook the ground.

The mutant tiger whipped his head around, flashing yellow-green eyes directly at them that seemed to reflect their own demise. The rumbling thunder blossomed into a roar so loud both young turtles cringed against one another.

It wasn't until Tigerclaw ran and took a leap off the building that Donnie gasped and oxygen found its way back into his lungs. That also seemed to be the same moment that Leo found his mobility and, still gripping Donnie's arm, he yanked his brother around to run.

They didn't make it halfway across the rooftop before a wall of robotic ninjas dropped before them with a disjointed chorus of synthetic yipping.

Neither hesitated to unsheathe his weapon and stab his way into the blockade.

The ache and lethargy that had been weighing on Don's muscles a moment ago was no longer an issue. He could feel the adrenaline gushing through his veins like someone had pumped him with pure cane sugar. He had never twirled his staff so fast in his life. In the moment, he had never been so _afraid_ in his life. But that was how it always felt—like a new fear, a colder, more air-compressing and eye-opening fear that made his body move almost too fast for his bustling mind to keep up with. But somehow his brain always found a way to keep at least half a step ahead of his body and laid out every move from A to Z, steps 1 through 10.

Kick left, duck, sweep, block up, strike right, jump, spin, check on Leo.

But that was hardly necessary. Leonardo's katanas were blurs of silver slicing and decapitating and cutting so quickly that the Footbots hardly had time to flash red eyes and adjust to his moves. They went down quickly, but there were always more…And they weren't the problem anyway.

Donnie felt the rooftop quake under a heavy and intentional landing, but he couldn't spin around fast enough.

A sharp hand snatched the rim of his shell and threw him against the cement, shooting rejuvenated sparks of pain through his already damaged carapace.

He didn't have time to groan about it.

He rolled away as Rahzar brought down a purposeful foot and stomped a crack into the paved roof instead. Donnie spun on his shell and kicked the wolf's feet out from under him.

Not two seconds after Rahzar met the rooftop a large paw clamped onto Donnie's ankle and dug protracted claws into his flesh as Tigerclaw yanked him across the roof. Donnie kicked his feet but the claws only burrowed deeper into his skin drawing out bright red drops of blood that oozed over his bandages.

He gritted his teeth against his own panicked panting, popped out his naginata blade, rammed it into the cement and used his staff to thrust his upper body up, twist around, get his free foot solidly on the ground and yank the other out of Tigerclaw's vise.

Shocks of pain shot up through his calf but he planted his feet firmly on the rooftop and boldly charged the tiger with his six-foot stick.

Tigerclaw's paws were heavy and forceful, but quick and accurate, striking directly at the young ninja's plastron where he would lose the most oxygen, pounding nerves in his arms that made his muscles seize up for seconds at a time, and coming up in orange blurs to block Donatello's every strike.

The purple-banded turtle twirled his staff above his head for a determined blow, but it was wrenched from his grasp by Rahzar and induced a panic at the sudden loss of security that briefly rendered him immobile. He cringed as Tigerclaw raised an enormous arm.

There was a faint whistle and a flash of silver as a shuriken blade sliced clean across Tigerclaw's cheek. The mutant carnivore growled and whipped around just in time to block Leo's assault from above.

Donnie turned to Rahzar just as the wolf snapped his staff in half and contented to curl up a smug grin.

"What's a turtle without his baton?" Bradford rumbled a chuckle.

Donnie's eyes narrowed indignantly. "Plenty."

He chucked out five throwing stars at once, sending them ricocheting off of the giant Chinese symbols on his left and the ventilation fan on his right and converging back on Rahzar who swatted at them as though they were giant bees, yelping when one or two nicked his skin.

Donnie charged while his opponent was distracted and planted a heel into the wolf's chest that sent him stumbling backward. He snatched back one half of his staff while Rahzar was unbalanced, turned on the ball of his foot, and sliced off the tip of one of Rahzar's protruding fangs.

Bradford growled, but before he could attack again, Donnie pitched a smoke bomb at his face and a shuriken directly after it. The shrill howl confirmed a hit.

He didn't wait for the smoke to clear away.

He whipped around, stabbing down two Footbots that leapt toward him, and rushed to join his brother in a losing battle.

Leo's katanas clashed with Tigerclaw's sword in rhythmic chinks that pierced the night until Donnie joined and the cadence was broken when Tigerclaw threw out his blade and it just skimmed the tip of Don's nose as he threw himself back to dodge the strike.

In what seemed to be one fluid motion, the mutant tiger tossed up his sword with his right hand and had his laser gun drawn before he caught it in his left. Leo jumped and dove across the rooftop, bouncing off of and over the heads of Footbots, using them as shields, while Don used the naginata half of his staff to block Tigerclaw's blade and jab at the cat's fur wherever he saw the chance.

In silent communication, Leo leapt off of the shoulders of a Footbot just before it was blown to bits and dove over Tigerclaw's head. And as the tiger was distracted with firing lasers at the flying turtle, Donnie rolled beneath him and kicked out one of his legs.

Tigerclaw fell to one knee and again shifted weapons so that the blade still swiped at Donnie now on his right while he continued to shoot at Leo now on his left.

He wanted Donnie alive, however sliced and skimmed the turtle might be by the end of the night, Tigerclaw would be careful not to cut off anything important. Leo on the other hand was a liability that needed to be dismissed quickly.

This wasn't hard to figure out, and the boys used it to their advantage, tumbling and flipping in circles around the cat, never landing on the same side, forcing the mutant to toss his weapons and adjust his aim so much that his arms nearly entangled themselves two or three times.

Donatello was twisting behind Tigerclaw's left as Leo turned front right when the other half of Donnie's own staff hit him like a boomerang to the temple. He tripped over his own feet and just caught a glimpse of Rahzar barreling toward him before Leo flung out two stars that both grazed the wolf's fur, drawing his attention just in time for Leo to leap up and spin a kick at Bradford's face that snapped his head around and sent him to the pavement with a quaking impact.

Donnie was in the midst of pushing himself to his feet and opening his mouth to give his thanks when Leo's blue eyes suddenly grew and he dove for his brother's right shoulder, one hand stretched out to push him away. Don turned just in time to see a giant clawed paw strike at his leader's face and send both boys crashing to the roof with the impact.

Leo fell like a dead weight on top of Donnie's plastron.

The purple-banded turtle only had a second to realize that the warm spray of liquid that had splattered his cheek was blood before he watched Tigerclaw snatch his brother up by the shell and toss him like a football across the roof where he collided headfirst against the stairwell door and then lay unmoving on the cement.

"Leo!" Donnie screamed, already on his feet.

He was pulled back by the tails of his mask and a force that nearly yanked his head off of his shoulders. He whipped around with a violent punch that barely caught Tigerclaw's whiskers as the cat subtly stepped backward.

Furious, Donnie unleashed a flurry of strikes, throwing punches and kicks that either missed by a skim or were effortlessly blocked. He was too enraged to focus on strategy anymore, to think, to rationalize that he was a child, a turtle, and this was a full grown tiger that he was trying to kick down.

It didn't take long for Tigerclaw to snatch one of his wrists and then the other when Donnie tried to catch him in the face with his free hand. Tigerclaw's one massive paw was like stainless steel handcuffs around Donnie wrists, again digging into his skin with razor-sharp claws.

Donnie planted his heels into the cement and attempted to yank himself out of the tiger's grip but this only gave his captor a reason to lift him off of the ground like he was a piece of cloth he didn't want getting dirty.

Donatello struggled, growling through bared teeth, squinting through blurred eyes, and tossing kicks that never made contact. He simply dangled there, only inches off the ground, wiggling wildly and uselessly.

It was then that he could feel his nausea, and pain, and exhaustion, and panic catching up with him. He couldn't look over his shoulder toward Leo, and he desperately wanted to. He had to get to his injured brother somehow. He had to see how much damage had been done. He had to see where exactly Tigerclaw's tiger claws had managed to carve open his brother's flesh. He had to make sure there was no cranial damage, no broken bones, no severed body parts, no terrific amount of blood loss.

His stomach roiled and he fought harder.

"You waste your energy," Tigerclaw said rather calmly, as though he was sure he'd already won the game. The way he held up his trophy, he might as well have. "Energy you will need to do my master's bidding."

"I won't," Donnie hissed through his teeth. "I'm not doing _anything_ for that monster."

"You will. Or it will be your brother's head."

"Like hell!"

Only Donnie looked up fast enough to see his hot-tempered brother's leap a split second before Raph's heel smashed into Tigerclaw's temple.

The assassin went down with a heavy crash and nearly landed on top of Donatello who had been dropped on his shell only a second beforehand. He rolled away from the tiger and for a moment stared with wide eyes and a loud pant as Tigerclaw lay face-down on the cement and didn't move.

Mikey was by his side just as quickly as Raph had turned his back on the enemy to rush for Leo.

Donnie hadn't realized how badly he was shaking until Mike grabbed his arm and tried to pull him to his feet. He slipped and fell on his butt twice before he finally latched onto the lip of Mikey's shell with one hand and dug his fingers into his brother's arm with the other, slightly leaning against him once he was up on his feet.

"You…" He paused to catch his breath but kept his eyes as focused on his little brother as he could make possible. "What…Karai?" was all he could manage.

Michelangelo just looked up at him with round blue eyes too severe for Donnie to even interpret.

The little turtle said nothing, and Donnie's heart jumped into his throat. He glanced toward his leader.

Raph had turned him over and was frantically shaking Leo's shoulder's trying to wake him, eyes too wide and panicked to truly be Raphael's.

Donnie's head shook on its own. He could not let this mission be a complete failure, not if it had just cost him a brother.

Dazedly, he found himself pushing away from Mikey and rushing for the edge of the building, arms waving out in front of him as he stumbled and caught himself on the ledge.

He peered down to the rooftop below where she had been, curled up and asleep, as far from moving as a boulder might be sitting in the middle of a stream. But when he blinked the blur from his vision he saw nothing.

Karai was gone.


	20. Chapter 20

Why did he ever believe he could do this? To be a better father the second time around? Was it not enough that he had to lose his first child more than once—lose his wife? What made him think he could shelter and protect four rambunctious boys that _never_ listened?

Maybe it was him. Why wouldn't it be? It only made sense. He'd never known anyone else to have such terrible luck. It almost made him laugh. He didn't believe in luck, but sometimes it was the only thing there to blame when he wanted not to be the root of his own misfortunes. He'd lost Tang Shen. He'd lost Miwa. And now his four headstrong teenagers had disappeared yet again—gone.

But they couldn't be _gone_ gone. Not now. They'd be back any minute. That was why he stood at the very bottom of the stairs, just as he had the last time they'd gone out. That was why he clenched his paws behind his back, staring with unblinking eyes just beyond the turnstiles waiting for that hunk of metal they called a "Shellraiser" to come squealing to a halt.

They'd be back any moment. They always came back. Sometimes it was a close call and sometimes he had to go out and fetch them himself but they always returned. They would call him wouldn't they? If they needed him?

His fur bristled and his stomach clenched. He closed his eyes and bowed his head, narrowing all of his focus on his breathing, not allowing his heart to skip any beats, to panic. He had to stay calm. He must. This happened every time. If he allowed himself to succumb to panic every time they left the lair, he'd die of a heart attack before the age of sixty.

Funny, he had never felt so old as when he'd first accepted the job as the father of four mutant turtles. He wasn't even old when Miwa was born hardly a year before that. He was quite sure. In fact, he remembered feeling quite spritely, rejuvenated with new life upon her arrival. If anything, she'd made him feel _young_.

Maybe it was because his sons had come to him at an untimely moment, a dark moment. Though, at the time it had all been one big blur. So sudden. One moment he was a man with a glass bowl of pet turtles, and the next he was a rat with two armfuls of wailing babies,_ children_, sentient beings that required care—_his_ care.

No, it had not been his first thought to take them in. He'd been so confused and exhausted and felt that maybe he had finally snapped psychologically and hadn't realized it until looking down at his pawed hands, furry belly and…tail.

The tail was strange, yes. And it had taken a long time to get used to. Simply the weight of it dragging behind him wherever he walked was at first odd, like a snake had been stapled to his backside. But it worked magnificently for balance and he'd strangely come to appreciate it. But the baby turtles…They'd been even stranger, the only thing that told him he wasn't drugged or asleep or simply insane because for the first hour their bawling was so loud there was no possible way he was hearing their voices in his head.

And when he'd finally buffed up the courage to gather them up in his arms, the little fists tugging on his fur had been twice as enlightening as a pinch in the arm. And when, ten minutes later, he could still feel the dull pain of hair being ripped from his skin he had decided that he indeed was not dreaming.

So he had taken them underground and sat there for God-only-knew how long, staring at these little, weirdly adorable creatures that he couldn't even put a name to as they crawled around the slime-coated floors, pushing each other, climbing over one another, crying some more, examining their own extremities as Splinter had examined his—the tail.

And he'd had no idea—_no_ idea what he would do with them.

He considered leaving them somewhere—a place where they might be found and taken in by a generous soul. But of course that idea was immediately counted out. He doubted very highly that anyone else would be willing to take care of them, not the way they probably should have been taken care of—like human children. No, definitely not. The humans wouldn't believe them to be anything like them, even despite their abnormal size for baby turtles, and their strangely opposable thumbs, and their gurgling, squealing, and whining baby noises, and their almost frighteningly-human eyes. The smallest even had freckles. Freckles!

It had taken him hours to realize that the only suitable option was to take care of them himself, as he had planned to do before they were all mutated.

It wouldn't be so hard, he had assured himself. He'd had a baby once—not for very long, but it was practice. He knew what they would need and how often they'd need it—food, clean water, something to keep warm at night, a little TLC. It was just a matter of making these things available. It wouldn't be hard. A lot of work, yes. But not hard.

How very, _very_ wrong he had been.

Raising a human girl with a wife by his side might've been like tying a shoe. Easy. And once he learned he'd have never forgotten and it would've become second-nature. But that was not the life that fate led him to, because somewhere there was a God with the determination to test his every nerve, his patience, his capacity to love. Somewhere there was a God that wanted to drain him, physically, emotionally, _and_ spiritually. He'd thought he'd been through the most exhausting trials of his life when training in ninjutsu as a boy. How very, _very_ wrong he'd been about that too.

No one was more physically, emotionally, and spiritually drained than Splinter. No one was quite as old, or would ever feel as old. Were he still human he'd be sporting a full head of silver hairs by now. In fact, he'd plucked plenty of silver strands of fur from his body over the years. Though he wasn't quite sure stress worked the same way on rats.

They would get an earful from him, those boys. Not because they had disobeyed him—_again_. Not because they had put themselves in danger and were worrying him sick, but because they made him old. That was it. That was what they'd hear when they finally returned.

"I have grown old," he muttered to himself, eyes back to staring, "waiting for you to return."

He dared not blink, in case he missed their arrival, in case something vitally important happened, or some sign of their well-being flickered by. So he kept his eyes wide and round, slightly glossing over as he stared at the far brick wall, imagining their presence, listening to the steady dripping of pipes in the distance, the groaning and rattling of the subway overhead, running water, and the chiming of one of the boys' arcade games in the background.

"You will come home," said Splinter's voice firmly as though he was speaking to them face to face, demanding their immediate presence. "You _must_ return to me."

He didn't even know how long they'd been gone. Of course they had waited until he'd completely zoned out. Sometimes he thought he'd taught them too well. Their best work most times was performed when they were eluding him, stealthing their way out of his supervision.

But since he'd come back to full awareness, it had been two hours since he'd heard the comforting hum of their bickering, of their television shows, their pinball machine, and practice dummy. There were times when he craved silence, yes. But when it was finally given to him he'd always beg for the noises back, because ruckus and arguing and domestic chaos meant that his boys were home where they were supposed to be, in his realm of protection where he knew he could look after them.

It _was_ different this time. They weren't simply leaping over rooftops looking for Purple Dragons to kick around. Donatello was injured. Raphael might stir up complications. And Leonardo was _not_ focused, even as much as Splinter knew his eldest son wanted to be and might insist that he was. Leonardo was emotionally spent, tired, and this could potentially lead all four of his sons into a battle they could not win.

Maybe he should go out and find them. Maybe they were in trouble. Maybe they were captured. Maybe they were hurt.

His heart crawled into his throat.

Maybe they needed him.

His fists curled tighter and he decided he couldn't wait for them any longer. Something was wrong and he'd have to go out and find them, protect them, shepherd them back home.

Just as he resolutely stiffened his arms by his sides and took a step forward, his ear twitched at the squeal of brakes on the tracks.

The Shellraiser surged into the mundane drip-and-chime silence of the lair and lurched to a halt.

Splinter's sigh of relief was almost embarrassingly audible as the maze of knots in his stomach finally unraveled and allowed him to breathe normally again. He did not move from the bottom of the stairs.

But as the doors opened and Raphael backed out with his shell facing the lair and his shoulders hunched to his ears as though he was attempting to keep a significant weight off the ground, the knots returned to Splinter's stomach twice as sickened and anxious.

Donatello followed Raph through the doors, struggling and limping, spattered with blood that couldn't possibly all be his. Leonardo hung limply between them, eyes closed, head lolling back, the right side of his face and neck oozing with so much blood that his skin might've originally been red were it not for the spots of green here and there that dimmed in color with every passing second.

Michelangelo burst out of the Shellraiser last, fingers clamped around his nose, palm covering his mouth, blue eyes purposely averted.

"Mikey clear away the lab table," Donatello ordered breathlessly, adjusting his grip on his older brother's ankles as he and Raph made their way slowly toward the lab.

Mikey ran ahead and spared half a second's glance at Splinter, muttering, "Sorry Sensei," in a voice that threatened tears and vomit before he ducked into the lab.

Splinter, keeping a mien of calm despite the dread seeping through his veins, strolled quickly to Raphael and Donatello and relieved them of the weight between them by tucking his arms beneath his eldest son and lifting him as though he were a baby again, shifting his head to rest against his shoulder, not caring that he would get his robe smeared with blood.

"Quickly," he told the other two, leading the way into the lab after Michelangelo who had pushed everything that wasn't breakable onto the floor.

Donatello didn't seem to care or notice. The moment Splinter had laid Leonardo carefully on the table, Donnie was immediately by his side, using whatever cloth handy to staunch the blood still gushing from Leonardo's wounds.

"Mikey I need towels and water. Raph get the first aid kit. Master Splinter I need you to hold this—put lots of pressure on it."

Michelangelo darted from the room and Splinter did as he was told, pressing down firmly on the cloth covering his son's wounds. He did not look at Leonardo's face. Not yet. And neither did he open his mouth to speak to any one of his conscious son's, all for the same reason.

He did not want to lose his composure in front of them. He did not want them to know the turmoil he felt in his stomach, which crawled up his spine and spread though his chest. He gritted his back teeth and listened for his son's next orders.

Donatello was yelling at Raphael.

"Raph, snap out of it! The first aid kit, I need it_ now_!"

Splinter glanced over his shoulder at his second-eldest who seemed to have forgotten how to work his muscles. Raph simply stood there with limp arms, gazing down at his incapacitated brother with wide shining eyes and a heaving chest.

"Raph!"

"Raphael," Splinter called calmly—or at least he hoped that's how it came across.

His son's bright green eyes snapped up to his face.

"Your brother will be alright."

Raph's bottom lip quivered and he grimaced. After flashing another glance at Leonardo, he darted from the room only to return a moment later with the giant forest green box. From then on he didn't leave the lab or take his eyes from his older brother.

Michelangelo returned with a stack of clean towels and his favorite soup pot full of filtered water. Both Splinter and Donatello immediately grabbed for a cloth. Splinter dipped his in the water and wrung it out as Donatello used a dry one first to mop up as much blood as he could.

Splinter could no longer keep his eyes from drifting to his eldest son, and a fire brewed in his chest as he saw Tigerclaw's unmistakable handiwork hideously marking up his child's face. Four, deep, long gashes scored the young turtle's skin from his temple to his throat, branching out about two inches beneath his jaw.

Those two inches seemed deadly, pooling out the darkest blood and refusing to lessen. No, Splinter was not the anatomy expert—Donatello had surpassed his medical and biological knowledge a long time ago—but those gashes seemed far too close to a vital artery.

If Donatello was aware of this, he said nothing. He had begun to don his doctor mask—an intense cover of concentration and control, never complete of course without the biting of his tongue. He wore this mask often, even tending to the smallest of injuries. Splinter knew it well by now, after years of supervising and then finally passing over the job of the family physician to his son.

But tonight there was something askew about that mask, something that seemed a little bent, a little off-kilter, as though he'd tried too quickly to put it on and was now flashing bits of raw emotion and instability beneath that plastic casing.

Splinter saw the drain, the exhaustion, the almost bruise-like shadows peeking out from his son's mask, the ashen-ness of his skin, the pale sweat rolling down his forehead, the welting sore on the left side of his face where his cheek met his jaw. He looked gaunt and malnourished, and Splinter knew that he was working on nothing more than an adrenaline rush.

For a moment the old rat ignored it, let his second youngest do his job, the job that, right now, was required of him.

He helped Donatello clear away as much blood as possible, and then again held a towel to his son's face as Donatello prepared another soaked in peroxide. He turned his head to cough a couple of times, and Splinter watched the rapid way with which he blinked his eyes as though to clear his vision. Looking closely, Splinter could see how intensely his son had to work just to focus his gaze.

He removed the cloth he held as Donatello moved in to dab the wound then toss their fifth bloodied towel to the floor and plunged his hands inside the pot of water to scrub them clean. He dried them quickly and swiped up the needle he had scrounged around for a moment earlier. He submerged it in rubbing alcohol, wiped it clean, and drew up a strand of long, thin, black thread.

Splinter watched as his son drew in his breaths through his nose and released them through pursed lips, the pace of his breathing rather quick. The rat observed Donnie's hands, hands that he had known to perform this one particular task hundreds of times, hands he knew were capable of finding a way into compact machinery, pinching baby-sized pliers that snipped through wires as small as the thread he held now, hands that had been naturally gifted with gentle force and delicacy.

Donatello could not get the string through the hole of the needle.

On a normal basis, he could do it effortlessly, but tonight it wasn't happening. His hands were shaking much too violently. Even if he did manage to prep the needle, there was no way he'd be able to sew his brother's wounds.

Splinter's eyes traveled to his son's face where his tongue was now bleeding from the pressure of his teeth.

"Donatello," said the sensei softly.

The brilliant teenager did not respond. His concentration was so thick, Splinter was sure he probably hadn't heard.

"Donatello."

"Hang on," he gasped, not looking away from what he was doing. "I-I can…I've almost got it."

"My son…"

Donnie's head shook furiously and his eyes glossed over. "I can do it Master Splinter," he rasped in a voice higher in pitch than was normal for him.

The fur between Splinter's eyebrows creased. "Donatello, you are—"

"I can do it!" he screamed, trembling even worse now. "I have to! I have to…I can."

Splinter started to reach out, slowly. The last thing he wanted was for his son to experience a breakdown right here, in front of his brothers, standing over a wounded warrior with a needle.

"I will do it musuko. Just hand it to me."

"N-No." Donnie's head shook again. "Y-You don't understand. There are-are major arteries, internal and external, carotids, thyroids…the larynx. I-If one of these is damaged it could—it could…" He couldn't continue, he was stammering too hard to choke out the words.

This happened often, Splinter knew, when Donatello was on his last leg of energy, when he was pushing unhealthy insomnia, when his patience was at its thinnest. He was fragile, like he'd crumple into a pile on the floor at any second.

"I am well aware of the situation my son. I know how to stitch a wound without causing damage," he said with as much confidence as he could muster up in his voice. "You must get some rest. I will take over."

"I-I can't. Leo-Leo...Leo needs me."

Splinter nodded. "Yes, he needs you _well_. He needs you rested, so that you may look after him in the future, my son." He reached out with more purpose now, curling his fingers around the needle and his son's wrist.

"Donatello…Give it to me."

"No!" The stubborn turtle yanked it back, stumbling off a couple of steps. "I can…" He coughed. "I can do it. I'm not weak. I'm not weak!"

"Donatello, you _must _rest!" Splinter shouted finally.

"I'm fine!"

"You are _not_…Michelangelo!"

Mikey snapped his gaze on his father with slightly frightened eyes.

"Take your brother to his room now."

"No!" Donnie screamed. "He needs me!"

"Donatello, you are of _no_ use to your brother this way!" Splinter barked.

Donnie's eyes darted from his sensei to his brother and he lost himself in a fit of coughing. He buried his face in his arms and doubled over, hacking with wet coughs so thick and consistent that, for a moment he struggled to breathe.

"Donnie…" Mikey reached out a ginger hand, eyes wide and worried, but Donatello lurched away.

Keeping one arm around his face, he set down the needle and rushed from the room with his head bowed.

Michelangelo looked toward his father with hesitation.

Splinter nodded once. "Dress his wounds. Then make sure he goes to sleep."

The youngest nodded and darted from the room after his brother.

When it was him and Raphael alone, he resumed the work that had been started and spoke to his second-eldest without lifting his head.

"What happened?" he said in a low voice.

He sensed his son's eyes darting to him for the first time, and knew a fear had spread across Raphael's green irises.

"We…We tried to get Karai back," Raph said dazedly. "Leo was—with Donnie and Tigerclaw spotted them. He was going to take Donatello. He was going to kill Leo," he said, looking back at his brother. "He'll be alright won't he Sensei?"

Splinter did not answer. Instead he focused his energy into stitching his son's wounds, tightly pinching the needle in his fingers to keep it from slipping out of his grip. It was covered with blood now. As were his hands. It was getting hard to determine where the gashes started and ended.

He noticed Raphael shifting uncomfortably, opening and closing his mouth as though there was something important plaguing his mind. Splinter kept an ear alert but did not look up from his work.

"I didn't mean to," he caught his son mumbling—a whisper he knew he was not meant to hear, and so he ignored it for now.

It was especially easy to do so when Leonardo's head rolled from one side to the other and a guttural groan bubbled up in his throat.

Splinter paused, staring with wide eyes down at his son—his son who, until that moment, had shown no sign of life. The old rat could feel his heart in his throat again.

Raphael had noticed too and was also bending over Leo, gaping down with round eyes.

"Leonardo," Splinter called softly, brushing a ginger hand across the turtle's cheek.

"Leo?" Raph choked.

Leonardo coughed and blood leaked faster from the lacerations in his throat. Splinter scrambled for a fresh towel and pressed it against the wound.

The young leader mumbled something, his lips barely moving, his voice trickling from his mouth on a wispy breath. His eyes remained closed.

"What is it my son?" Splinter asked, leaning closer, disregarding the fact that he probably shouldn't allow Leonardo to damage himself further by speaking. He should probably get back to closing up the gashes in his face. But he wanted to hear his voice. He wanted to know that his eldest son would be okay.

Leo mumbled again, louder but still incoherent.

"Donnie," he finally breathed in a voice no stronger than a faint breeze. "Donnie..."

Before Splinter could part his lips, Raphael had turned on his heel and was marching quickly for the door, hands shooting up to cover his face as he left.


	21. Chapter 21

He didn't know if he was going to vomit or cry. Neither were desired options. Both would make him look weak.

_I'm not weak_, he thought to himself. Though the voice in his head sounded suspiciously like Donatello's.

He hated that. He didn't want to have _anything_ in common with his younger brother and he hoped to God that he didn't look as pathetic and exhausted as Donnie.

It had almost drawn out the smallest bit of sympathy in Raphael, to watch Donatello tremble from head to foot, covered in blood and sweat and bruises, hoarsely screaming that he was capable of getting a stupid piece of string through a stupid needle even though he couldn't even do _that_ much.

Raph was glad Splinter had forced Donnie out of the room and made Mikey run out after him. Neither of them needed to know that Raph's little bit of sympathy for his geek of a brother had evaporated the moment barely-conscious Leonardo had coughed up Donatello's name.

_Why Donnie?_ he thought, the words practically throwing a fit on his tongue, pushing hard against his teeth at an attempt to burst through with an angry scream. Why _Donnie_?

He didn't know. He didn't _want_ to know. And yet the question continued to repeat itself as he stomped through the archway in pursuit of the sanctity of his own room, where he could bury his face in his pillow and maybe stop breathing. What else was he needed for? _Leo_ quite obviously didn't want him around.

He didn't notice Mikey stepping out into the hall and closing the door to Donnie's room until his little brother practically tackled him to the floor, throwing all of his weight into Raph's side and shoving him into his own bedroom before Raph himself could even get the door open.

Raphael, who had been completely involved in his own sulking, lost his footing and fell back on the floor, blinking up at his little brother with wide _what the shell?_ eyes as Mikey slammed the door shut, trapping them both in the shadows of Raph's room.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!"

Raph bared his teeth, now jumping up on his feet. "Don't!" he bellowed jabbing a warning finger in his brother's direction. "Don't you _dare_! I don't need a lecture from _you_."

"You could've gotten them killed!" Mikey shouted, eyes wide, hands gripping the sides of his head as though to keep it from exploding.

There was so much negative emotion engulfing his blue irises that Raph couldn't name what was going through Michelangelo's head. Usually he was really good at that. Usually the answer was: nothing important.

Not this time.

"Don't you think I know that?" Raph hissed, turning his voice down, wary of Donnie in the next room. "How d'you think I feel right now?"

The little orange-banded turtle wrinkled his beak as if in disgust. "I can never tell Raph," he spat. "Not anymore. I don't_ know_ you."

Raphael gritted his teeth and looked away, taking a few discreet steps back. Mikey was truly frightening when he was angry, it happened so infrequently. Usually the little turtle just brushed off anything that made him uncomfortable, like he was shooing a fly from his shoulder. He might flash a frown, which was more like an indiscernible drop at the corners of his mouth, but two seconds later he'd perk that persistent smile back up and insist that there was _something_ in this goddamned world still left to joke about.

Raph always thought Mikey never _knew_ how to be angry—not _truly_ angry at least. He'd seen him with an indignant squint to his eyes, a slant to one side of his mouth if he was slightly offended by a tease one of his brothers made about his lack of intelligence, maybe he'd snap occasionally if he thought he or his siblings were being treated wrongly, but never _angry_. Not like he was now.

And Raph felt a twinge of guilt from this. He knew how enthusiastic Mikey was about him, looking up to him as though he was some kind of hero. He'd never understood it and always knew that one day he'd end up disappointing the little bugger, but he didn't think it'd be this soon. Neither had he thought it would affect him so much, make his stomach turn and his heart feel like someone was trying to squeeze the blood out of it.

"Why did you do it?" Mikey asked, eyes hard and cold.

When Raphael said nothing, he asked again, louder, demanding. "_Why_ did you do it Raph? And don't lie to me this time. I want the truth."

The red-banded turtle dug around quickly inside his own chest, in his stomach, his throat, his palms, the bottom of his feet, searching every part of him for that limitless supply of defiance he'd never had to restock on before. He found just enough under his tongue.

"I don't know Mikey," he snapped.

"Yes you do," Mikey shot back, better prepared. It was as though he'd been thinking of this argument for weeks. He didn't even wait for his older brother to revise his answer. "You're totally jealous of Donnie bro," he stated. "I know you are. You've been—"

"I am _not_ jealous!"

There was a flash of green, a loud smack, and Raphael lifted his hand to his cheek, staring with wide, gaping eyes at his little brother who didn't even blink.

"Bullshit!"

Raph's mask creased worriedly at the center of his brow. He took a step away from Mikey, this time without hiding it.

He didn't understand. He thought his little brother had just slapped him and screamed a curse in his face but he couldn't be sure. Maybe he was having a nightmare? Maybe he'd passed out on the floor of the lab or in the Shellraiser on the way home, or maybe he'd fallen asleep waiting for Leo and Donnie to blow up Tigerclaw?

This smallish turtle standing before him didn't look anything like his brother and it certainly didn't_ sound_ like Mikey either. But the sting in his cheek was warning him not to toss away the reality so quickly.

"I asked you not to lie to me Raph," Mikey said. "You owe me that. I'm not stupid."

Raph's hand slid away from his face and he took another step back. He felt himself mumbling though he'd never decided to say anything, and he heard a voice floating between him and his brother that sounded suspiciously like his own muttering an apology.

At this Mikey's eyes softened, became slightly warmer, a little more like they normally were, so full of sympathy and good nature, as though he hadn't expected Raphael to back down so soon. He didn't look as angry anymore, but he sure as shell wasn't smiling.

His gaze flickered quickly to the side. "I didn't mean to hit you."

Raph shook his head. He spoke again, but he still hadn't planned on it. "I deserved it."

Mikey chuckled dryly. The grin in the corner of his mouth was fake. "Yeah...You did."

Raphael continued to back away until his shell hit the wall, he pressed his palms against it. It was cool and grainy, solid, still soaked in those evil shadows. They seemed to latch onto his arms as though to pull him through the wall, make him a part of it, part of the darkness. Or maybe he already was. Maybe he had been accepted as a shadow a long time ago and was now simply sinking back into the arms of his brethren, where he truly belonged.

He slowly sank to the floor, his carapace scraping against the wall. He sat with his knees drawn and his hands on the floor, palms open and facing the ceiling as though giving in. His back teeth came together and he drew in a long, full breath through his nose, leaning his head back against the wall.

When he let that breath go, he sighed the words, "You're too good for me Mikey," looking toward the ceiling to fight the rim of moisture springing up from the corners of his eyes.

Michelangelo stared at him for a moment, then finally softened back to his original self and said, "Duh," as he crossed the room to plop down beside him.

He crossed his legs and looked down at his knee pads, hanging his arms off of them so that his fingers brushed against the floor as though he was dipping them into a pool of water.

There was silence between the two of them for the longest time, and Raph was glad that, of all people, Michelangelo had been the one with him when he'd made his greatest mistake.

Only his youngest brother could forgive him so easily.

Maybe this was why they spent so much time around one another, why Mikey never went away, why Raph only had to look over his shoulder to find the little sucker. Raphael could bite, and scratch, and claw, and scream, and hit, and kick the kid around all he wanted to and still Mikey would turn up by his side with the biggest smile in the world, like he'd never been offended, like he hadn't been threatened or abused or shouted at. He was completely fireproof. Raph's flames simply rolled off of him or else clung to Mikey's skin, flaring all around him, and the little turtle never burned.

Raphael had never realized how much comfort he found in this. Not until a moment ago when it had been quite obvious that Raph had seared the little one a bit too deep this time. But the way Mikey nestled next to him now, communicated that he'd heal, quickly, and he'd forgive just as effortlessly as always even despite Raph's complete undeserving.

"I won't say anything," Mikey said, looking at Raph now.

Raphael brought his eyes down from the ceiling to meet his little brother's.

"Not as long as you promise to do it yourself."

The red-banded turtle grimaced.

Mikey's expression became grave and when he spoke next his voice was sickeningly soft. "You could've gotten them killed bro," he reiterated. "We don't even know if Leo's gonna make it yet."

At this an instant shine came to Mikey's eyes and Raph had to look away quickly, a knot rising in his throat. If Mikey started crying, that would be it for him. He wouldn't be able to hold the last of his hard-shelled façade. He knew that.

"Raph."

Raphael shook his head. "I can't Mike," he whispered.

"Then Leo's gonna die, and _I'm_ gonna have to be the one to tell Splinter and Donnie why."

Those green eyes flickered back on that freckled turtle with both wonder and terror.

Michelangelo was blunt and honest. He did not hide anything. He'd always been an open book, always shoving the vibrantly colored pictures of his life and how he felt about it in his brothers' and their sensei's face, saying "This is what I think. This is how I feel. I don't care if you listen or not."

When Raph finally located his words, he found himself responding with, "Leo's not gonna die Mike."

Mikey grimaced and Raph allowed him to lean into him, huddling in the space between his knees and his plastron.

Slowly, Raph tucked his left arm beneath his baby brother's head and used his right to absently stroke his shell.

He didn't understand Mikey. He didn't understand why anyone would beg for comfort from the very thing that brought them harm. But he was grateful for his brother's presence all the same and had no desires for him to leave anytime soon.

"Please Raph," Mikey whispered. "I don't want you to hate Donnie."

Raphael pressed his lips against an argument.

"I don't want you and Leo to fight. And I don't want you to have to feel guilty about what you did for the rest of your life…They'll forgive you. But you have to give them the chance to."

Raph swallowed hard.

"Please, promise me you'll tell them."

The older turtle gingerly rested his hand on his brother's face and closed his eyes to ward off the burning. He dropped his head back against the wall and drew out the words from the deepest part of himself.

"I promise Mikey."


	22. Chapter 22

**Sooooo...I think maybe two or three more chapters after this guys o.o**

* * *

It had been three days since the failure of their last mission and Leo had not opened his eyes. Neither had he muttered another word, called for anyone else other than Donatello—not as far as Raph knew.

He wasn't sure what he wanted. He was scared to death that Leo would never come to, but at the same time a sickening dread churned in his stomach every morning that he opened his eyes and wondered if this would be the day.

He had made a promise to Michelangelo and he knew he had to stick to it, but he allowed himself to prolong the truth as long as Leonardo was out of commission. He told himself that he wanted to say it only once, and Leo had to be awake for that. But it was taking a long time for his older brother to join the conscious world and this sickened him more than the dread.

They had moved Leonardo to his own room after the first night. And since then Raphael had been slipping in and out, making sure to enter only when Splinter and Donnie were not hovering by Leo's bedside.

This was rather difficult though, seeing as Splinter hardly ever left Leo's room and Donnie was constantly mothering him, checking his temperature five times a day, changing his bandages and bedsheets, keeping his wounds clean, and wondering out loud if they might need to do a blood transfusion.

This only took a few hours to decide actually. And then Raph found himself sitting unnaturally still next to his unconscious leader for an hour, staring straight ahead.

He would have volunteered himself anyway, but as it was, he was the only suitable donor. Mikey normally passed out during these kinds of procedures and Splinter had firmly ruled out Donatello before the question could even be asked. Donnie had not argued, nor did he say anything to Raph or look him in the eye while he found a good vein in his arm and hooked him up to a tube.

Raph didn't look at Donnie either, more because he was afraid. What if Donnie already knew what he'd done—that this was all his doing? He _was_ a genius, couldn't he figure it out if he spent enough time thinking about it? And it wasn't like Raph remained perfectly inconspicuous around his purple-banded brother. He practically broke out in a nervous sweat every time he and Donnie were in the same room now. But the doctor never said anything, and Raph had to hope it was because Donnie was much too preoccupied with worrying over Leo.

When Raph woke on the fourth day there was a heavy silence blanketing the lair. He could only lie in bed for a couple minutes more, allowing a prickle of unease to ripple over his skin, before he rolled off of his mattress and slipped out of his room.

He forced himself to walk a couple doors down to Leo's room despite his muscles begging him to run, both afraid and anxious of what he'd find when he opened the door.

Nothing had changed—but that wasn't exactly to his relief.

Leo was lying back on his shell, mask-less, eyes closed, four gashes slowly taking their time healing on the right side of his face. He was breathing though.

Splinter sat in the corner on the opposite side of the room, obscured by shadows, face grim and concentrated, eyes closed as well. He was meditating.

He didn't seem to have noticed, or else didn't care to acknowledge that Raph had open the door, so he closed it quietly and walked away.

Mikey was still asleep. Donnie was not in his room.

Raph figured the genius was hauled up in his lab, probably tinkering with something to take his mind off of Leo's eternal slumber.

Raph wouldn't check in on him. He didn't need an awkward moment with Donnie.

He didn't want to start his daily work out either.

He and his brothers had been slacking in training for the past few days. In fact, they hadn't been training at all and Splinter didn't seem to care about this. They had basically been given the week off, but since it was for all the wrong reasons, no one seemed particularly thrilled about it. Raph knew his muscles were slowly losing their stamina, but he didn't have the energy to build them back up again.

Not having his regular sparring partner on hand might've been an excuse too.

He wasn't hungry either, and he normally couldn't find the patience to make himself food. He usually ate leftover pizza if Mikey didn't shove food in his face. Mikey wasn't likely to wake up for another couple of hours and there was no pizza. So he moved on.

He didn't realize, until he jumped down onto the abandoned subway tracks, that his feet were taking him away from the lair.

Of course Splinter had forbidden them to leave, and for a few days no one had fought him on it. But obviously now Raph's feet felt the need to be defiant again. He wouldn't go up top. He knew that much. He just needed to get out of the box, out of the thick atmosphere in his home that currently smelled like the sick and dying.

He roamed through the tunnels, not bothering to turn his head at the sounds of claws scurrying and scraping against the stone floor and water dripping and rippling through and from pipes. His own feet dragged through the sewage with a slosh that probably echoed through the entire sewer system, but he didn't care.

There was nothing down there—nothing except a family of mutants, hovering in a cumbersome fog as they waited for one of their kin to simply open his eyes and speak to them again.

He didn't know where his feet were leading him until he lifted his eyes from the slimy cement and saw a figure sitting under the blue-grey, morning light seeping through the grate halfway down the tunnel.

He stopped in his tracks, heart jumping violently as his eyes widened on what looked like his older brother sitting with his shell against the wall and his knees drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped around his legs. But when he realized he'd just seen Leo buried under blankets on his bed back in the lair, Raph noticed the distinct leanness of the turtle sitting yards away, the bandages around his shell, the purple tint of his mask.

"Donnie?" Raph finally choked, stepping forward.

It wasn't until those dim brown eyes slowly turned toward him that his confusion was suddenly replaced by anger.

Donatello wasn't supposed to be here. He wasn't supposed to know this place existed. There were hundreds of tunnels crossing paths surrounding the lair, thousands of grates. Why was Donatello sitting under _this_ one?

"How did you…?" Raph tried to ask, but his temper was rising so quickly that he couldn't form the words.

His fists clenched by his sides and he could feel his face getting hot, probably burning red enough to match his mask. This was supposed to have been a secret shared between him and Leo, the last string holding them together as brothers, and now it, like everything else, like Leo_ himself_, was tainted by Donatello.

Even in an unconscious state Leo was choosing Donnie. This wasn't fair.

"Leo told you about this didn't he?" Raph accused, his voice loud and echoing.

Donnie smiled at him—only it wasn't a smile. It was more like someone had attached two hooks to either corner of his mouth and were drawing up the sides with transparent strings. There was no effort behind it. It was a tired smile, an I-don't-care-how-mad-you-are-or-how-loud-you-yell-at-me smile, because Donatello was tired and he _didn't_ care anymore.

"No," he said, his voice drifting over a faint sigh.

He looked away from Raph, turned his eyes toward the wall in front of him. "I'm a genius remember?" he spoke wispily, as though he was in a trance, eyes unblinking and glassy—grey almost.

"It was about eight years ago that you brought Leo down here for the first time, correct? It took maybe until the third time for me to gather up the courage to follow the two of you, find out where you'd been sneaking off to. I was angry at first, that neither of you had mentioned anything to me or Mikey, but I knew if I made a fuss about it and told Splinter that you'd been coming this close to the surface all this time, _none_ of us would get to come back."

Raph said nothing. He didn't know _what_ to say.

He watched Donnie's phony smile slip effortlessly into an authentic frown, and it wasn't until then that he noticed how grey Donnie's skin was, how loosely it clung to his bones, how hollow his face looked. The shadows beneath his eyes had not faded. In fact they'd only gotten worse. Though Donatello had always been leaner than the rest of them he'd never been skinny, not until now. He looked like he might blow away, become a trail of dust if a strong enough breeze came by. There was a sheen to his face, to the crown of his head, where bullets of sweat teared down his temples and his forehead, soaking into his mask.

He coughed, a sickly, wet, hacking cough, a noise that had become normal over the past few days that no one had acknowledged for they had all been much too preoccupied with hoping Leonardo would wake.

Despite all the force that Slinter had used that first night to get Donnie just to lie down for a while, it was clear that, four days later, Donatello still had not allowed himself enough time to rest. When he spoke next, Raph could hear an obvious hoarseness to his voice now.

"I've done everything I can think of," he whispered. "If only I could give him an x-ray, a CAT scan, an MRI, figure out what's wrong. If only we weren't such freaks, we could take him to a hospital, have a real doctor look at him," he said, bitterly staring at his hand. "Someone who could actually _do_ something."

Raph's chest tightened. "I thought you had something like that, an x-ray or somethin' to see inside him?"

Donnie's head shook, he didn't look away from the wall. "Remember when I was experimenting with chemicals, trying to find a retro-mutagen? I blew it up."

Raph furrowed his brow. "Well can't you fix it?"

Donnie's head turned slowly, his eyes coming around last, so weighted and dead that he looked more like a corpse staring in his brother's direction.

"Can't _you_?" he said dryly.

Raph dropped his gaze. He tried not to let the heat bubble up in his stomach.

"There are too many broken things," Donnie muttered, eyes glassing over again. "I'm tired of trying to fix them all."

"What about Leo?"

"What_ about_ Leo?"

Raph gritted his teeth. "He's in a coma…Aren't you going to do something about it?"

"There's nothing I _can_ do Raph. I just told you that," Donnie snapped, refocusing his gaze.

They stared at each other for a long time, a band of tension weaving between them. Then Donnie shook his head and looked away.

"I'm sorry alright," he said hotly. "I'm sorry my intelligence doesn't match yours. I'm sorry I can't tell Leo to walk and have him get up and be completely healed. I'm not Jesus dammit. I'm not perfect. I can probably figure out how to turn water into wine but I sure as hell can't walk on water. I mean what do you want me to _do_ Raph?" he asked, pushing himself unsteadily to his feet. "Shall I put everyone out of their misery? Slip some cyanide into the water supply so that we're all as dead as Leo?"

"Donnie…"

"What?" he snapped, voice ringing across the tunnels. He followed this up with a fit of coughing and forced it to subside, straightening up as though nothing was wrong. As though he wasn't sick.

"It's my fault," he said suddenly, eyes glossing over with tears. "I've tried to figure it out, but I don't know where it came from…It was a stupid rock. Can you believe that?"

He laughed in an unbalanced kind of way.

Raph's stomach turned.

"It hit me," he continued, gingerly brushing his face where the bruise was now a yellow-green color. "And I was too close to Leo. I knocked off his aim. And we got caught…A rock Raph. A_ rock_."

Donnie suddenly burst into tears and buried his face in his hands, standing hunched over before Raphael under the spotlight of the grate, hacking between sobs. It was truly pathetic.

"I'm s-such an—i-idiot."

Raph swallowed hard, unsure whether he should reach out or not. "No you're not Donnie," he muttered instead.

"I couldn't—I couldn't even s-stitch him up."

He wailed for a moment, unable to speak.

"I couldn't do anything!"

With a shaking hand, Raph lifted his arm and touched his brother's shoulder. "It…It's not your fault Donnie."

Donatello shook his head, pressing his face deeper into his palms. "It might a-as well be."

Raph couldn't breathe anymore. He could feel the words rolling around in his stomach, threatening to vomit all over his younger brother, tell him the truth, relieve him of this deluded guilt.

It wasn't Donnie's fault. It wasn't. As much as Raph had tried to convince himself that it was, he knew that was a far cry from the truth. Donatello had been nothing but good. He'd done nothing except try to fix things, all the broken things, the _too many_ broken things. And now he was beating himself up because he couldn't fix Leo, because their family was still in pieces.

Raph swallowed again. It was time to grow up.

"Donnie," he started softly, squeezing his brother's shoulder. "I…_I_ know where it came from."

Donnie sneezed and stopped his tears. He lifted his face and brushed a fist over his cheek. He looked extremely ill.

"What?" he whimpered, sniffing.

Raph's eyes shifted. "I…" He let out a long breath and closed his eyes. "It was me Donnie."

An echoing drip made the musty atmosphere shudder. Taxis and trucks and pedestrians honked and rumbled and walked with brisk feet just above their heads. There was a rat somewhere at the far end of the tunnel nosing through a pile of trash that had drifted in through the sewage.

Countless heartbeats passed, ticking away the seconds in his throat, and Donatello said nothing.

Raph opened his eyes and peeked up at his brother to see him staring down at him with a blank gaze, as though he had just come to a realization.

"You?" was all Donnie said, his voice quiet.

Raph pressed his lips together and nodded.

Then Donatello's expression finally began to take form and Raph's insides cringed.

"You," Donnie said again, only this time it wasn't questioning. Raphael watched the utter rage drain all but one color from his brother's face and inflate his chest.

"You…You…" Donnie tried to speak, tried to express his anger, but it wasn't quite coming out right. He took a step away from Raph and threw his arm from his shoulder.

"Donnie, I can—"

"No," Donnie shouted, his voice ringing sharp and clear through every tunnel for miles. "No! You don't get to make up an excuse! All this time _I've_ been making excuses _for_ you. I said you were angry; you were just complicated. You were hurt somehow. Not now. Not anymore. You're just—just…You're just an ass Raphael! You're a hard-hearted, mean, grade-A jerk!"

"Donnie, come on!" Raph tried to argue, following his brother's movements as Donnie skirted his way around him, slowly backing down the tunnel toward home.

"Damn you Raph!" He coughed and then shook his head, gazing at his brother in shame. "I don't—I don't understand what I did to you," he said, pure hurt gushing from his voice now.

This was the perfect moment to vomit up all of his issues with his younger brother, all of his insecurities, his envy, his hatred. He had the chance to scream at Donnie, make his actions perfectly valid. But he couldn't. The words wouldn't come up and his fire had been doused by the hurt in his brother's eyes, by the paleness of his skin, by the way he trembled and shook, tears again building up in his eyes.

"Do you realize what you've done?" Donnie said hoarsely. "You could've…Leo might…I was terrified Raph!" His tears broke loose, and this time Raph watched them slide down his cheeks. "I was so scared. I thought Leo was going to die. I thought I was going to get c-c-c…"

Raph grimaced as Donatello struggled to speak and then became flustered, gritting his teeth, cheeks flushed, fists curled.

"Donnie…I'm sorry man."

"No you're not," Donnie snapped. "No you're _not_. You're not sorry. You haven't been sorry. And you'll never _be_ sorry."

"Yes I am!"

"Then how come it took you this long to apologize?! Where were you two weeks ago when you slapped me across the face and called me a freak and humiliated me in front of my brothers? Where were you when you left me to the Foot? Where were you every day of my life that you pushed me down, and called me names, and threw bigger things than rocks at my head? You're not sorry Raph. I'm not falling for that again!"

Raph could only grimace, forced to eat the comeback Donnie had just dished out as his brother turned his back and began walking away. He wanted to argue for himself—oh did he want to. But Donnie was right, not that he wasn't sorry. He was, truly. He'd never wanted to hurt his brother. But he was right about Raph's lack of apology, about his cruelty and his super assness.

It was a beautiful comeback, one he'd never have expected to hear from his mild-tempered younger brother. But Donnie had found his voice, and all it had taken was weeks of no sleep and pretending not to be sick, years of being bullied and finally having his life thrown on the line.

Raph's stomach turned. He didn't want the conversation to end there.

"Donnie…"

Donatello didn't even spare a glance over his shoulder.

"I _am_ sorry Don," he said, raising his voice as his brother traveled farther down the tunnel. "I know I've been a jerk to you, and I don't have an excuse. You're right. I just…I'm mad that—that I can't be like you."

At this Donnie stopped, but did not turn around.

"I didn't want to hurt you bro. I wasn't—I mean I _was_ aiming at you, but I didn't mean to actually throw the thing. I didn't know it would get you and Leo in so much trouble. I didn't know it would all lead up to this. I just…" He sighed. "I dunno, Donnie."

His brother did not respond, nor did he move any farther forward.

"I'd understand if you hated me for the rest of your life. But I—promised Mikey I wouldn't hate _you_. He just wants us to be cool with each other. So I thought that—maybe I could ask you to forgive me?"

Donnie propped a hand on the wall, leaning toward it slightly. He still didn't answer.

"Donnie?" Raph asked, unsure.

Maybe it was too late. Maybe it was too much to ask for his brother's forgiveness so soon.

Donatello looked as though he wanted to turn, was going to turn. He started to. He managed to face the opposite wall and part his lips.

Only one word came out. "Raph," and it lived on the faintest puff of air, as though it was the final exhale at the end of play. But Donnie could say nothing further.

The moment his hand left the wall, he collapsed. Knees buckling, he fell forward on the sewer floor with a splash of disturbed, unfiltered water and didn't move.

Raph's breath hitched. "Donnie?"

He rushed over to him, latched onto his brother's shell and turned him over. "Donnie! Donatello?"

He shook his brother's shoulder, slapped him lightly across the face a couple of times. Donnie's eyes refused to open. Instead his head drooped back against Raph's arm and his mouth stood agape, his breath rattling through his lungs and escaping in short breaths from his throat. When Raph tilted his chin down, he could feel his brother's skin nearly searing his own. His heart thumped hard against his plastron.

"Donnie wake up!" he begged. "Don't do this to me."

A choked cough broke through Donatello's breathing and his eyelids fluttered for half a second, as though he was doing his best to come back to consciousness, but when they closed again they did not reopen and his body went completely limp.

"Donnie…Donnie?"

Nothing.

He sat there at the center of converging shadows, holding his younger brother in his arms, practically hyperventilating over him until he forced himself to draw in a long breath through his nose and gasped an, "Okay."

He grabbed his brother's wrists and pulled him around onto his back. "You're okay."

He shifted with great difficulty to get onto his knees and then stood, bearing his brother's weight on his shell, tugging his arms down and bending over to get as much of Donnie off the floor as possible. As it was, Donatello was a good head taller than him, and his feet dragged along the ground as Raph started making his way down the tunnel toward home.

"I gotcha brother," he said through his teeth. "I gotcha."


	23. Chapter 23

**Another challenging chapter. The relationship between Leonardo and Splinter, I have decided, is very hard to write.**

* * *

He was swimming.

Or more like floating, as his arms and legs weren't really getting him anywhere. In fact, they weren't moving at all. Quite the opposite actually, he was about as stationary as a rooted oak lying on its back, strapped down by moss and weeds slowly winding up his appendages over centuries.

He was just _there_—which didn't entail all that much. There was nothing around him, not that he could see, but then again he wasn't really looking. Either his eyes were shut tight or there was just nothing at all, nothing but black.

Nothing included gravity—or excluded it? There wasn't much to speak of. His limbs were heavy, as though anchoring him to whatever atmosphere he hovered in, but they weren't being coaxed toward a center by an invisible pull. He was just floating, as though on the surface of a lake, a body of unmoving water. But he wasn't wet. There was no distinction between above or below and there was only one element—one element, which he couldn't name. If he had to guess he might've said oxygen, air, an ether of some sort. He could breathe…Sort of. He didn't really know actually. He hadn't been paying attention to that.

He drew a breath in through his nose. His lungs took in the air without effort. So it _was_ oxygen. But…

Ow.

That hurt.

Like really,_ really_ bad.

From the crown of his head to the base of his throat there was pain—two distinct brands. The first was sharp and heavy, pounding like a heartbeat,_ his_ heartbeat, only in his brain, and it was making his ears ring, and it felt like someone was beating a fist repeatedly against his skull, as though trying to bust down an unyielding door.

The second was a burn. Lighter than the pounding, but fierce, and it infected the entire right side of his face stretching out into branches of fire that crawled down from his temple to his throat. And it dug into his skin, like white-hot needles being dragged down his face, ripping it open, blurring and converging into one pain that had no epicenter. And so he simply hurt all over, unaware of the rest of his body, which was maybe why he couldn't get his hand to lift, to touch his face and make sure it was actually still there.

It was uncomfortable and he wished it would go away. He wasn't even sure what was causing it, where it came from, who or _what_ was doing or had done him harm. He couldn't see anything. But of course his eyes weren't open were they? He couldn't tell yet. But he kept trying.

In the meantime, he had to figure out how to get rid of this pain, and if he couldn't move his arms to do it himself, he knew he'd have to call for someone's help.

So he worked his jaw for a minute, took his time prying his lips apart. (He didn't know why this was so damn hard.) And he called for the person he knew could take the pain away. The person who had been bandaging his wounds, and bracing his broken bones, and stitching up his worst cuts, and wiping the blood from his face since he was…Six? Seven? Eight? He couldn't remember. All of those ages seemed extremely young, but his brother had never really been limited by age.

"Donnie," he finally called. It took a lot of energy, a lot of oxygen. He wasn't even sure he'd spoken loud enough to be heard. So he tried again. "Donnie."

He took a brake to breathe, allowing his exhausted muscles to sink in the not-water-but-oxygen for a minute. He realized it was hot and he was thirsty.

"Donnie," he moaned.

Where the shell was he? Where was anybody?

"Donnie!"

He might've shouted that last one. He couldn't tell. But a moment—or multiple moments—passed and Donatello neither entered the darkness nor answered his call, and the pain was still there, still living and writhing along his cheek and jaw and burrowing into his skin to twist and curl sharply up and through his brain.

He gave up. Just for a little while. Or maybe a long while. He couldn't tell. In fact, when he decided to try again he couldn't get his lips apart anymore, couldn't get his tongue to work. So he exhaled a long, exhausted sigh and just waited for someone to come along. If anyone was _going_ to come along. Maybe they were stuck in the darkness too, floating somewhere, not quite sure if their eyes were open or not. He'd try to look for them later; he was too tired now, and he was in too much pain to move.

He tried not to think about it, tried to meditate for a while. But it seemed as though his mind was floating too, somewhere away from him, detached from his body like a bubble of indistinguishable substance. He couldn't reach out to grab it; he couldn't move his arms. So he watched it—or didn't watch it—float in circles around him, not really thinking of anything except how much it hurt to exist. Or did he exist? He wasn't sure.

He tried to remember the last thing that had happened, working backward through his memory, peering through the dark, through his bubble mind, to find a detail, something small that might bring the memory back.

He remembered purple.

Donnie.

Purple always meant Donnie.

Yeah, he remembered Donnie. They were together somewhere. But where?

Not the lair. The city. On a roof. Chinese symbols, or something like that—giant ones. Chinatown. They'd been hiding from something? No, sneaking up on something—or something like that. Because, that's right…They were ninjas. How cool.

But ninjas were_ always_ sneaking around. What made this different than every other memory he had?

Because for some reason whatever had happened left him in pain and confused, and left Donnie missing.

Where was Donnie?

He hadn't shown up yet. Leo's head was still throbbing, his throat still parched, his body still stationary. He tried to call for his brother again, but he couldn't get the words past his chest, so he went back to trying to remember.

Chinatown with Donnie. They were sneaky ninjas. On a mission. They wanted something. _He_ wanted something. Something asleep. But that made no sense.

He wanted something breathing. Something big. Something white. It had a name. So it wasn't a some_thing_. It was a some_one_. What was the name? It started with a C, or maybe it was a K. Kyle. Kayleen. Kara. Karrie…Karai!

He remembered now.

He remembered, and it all flashed before him like a horrible nightmare on fast forward, with all the same amounts of fear and adrenaline choking out his lungs and making his limbs tremble.

Flashes of black and white and orange and purple. Flashes of mutant Karai, and Tigerclaw, and Rahzar, and Footbots, and Donnie. They'd been on a mission to get Karai back and something had gone horribly wrong—_predictably_ wrong…Turtle luck.

Leo had missed his shot. The bomb exploded close to Tigerclaw's head but not _nearly_ close enough. He and Rahzar and their Footbots had attacked from all directions and Leo could see it—Donnie getting to his feet, opening his mouth to say something, not paying attention while Tigerclaw pounced at him, a large paw with protracted claws raised to strike, and Leo had lunged, pushed his brother out of the way, and that was all he could remember. There was nothing after that, nothing but floating in darkness with his eyes maybe but not open.

Oh God.

His chest hurt. That was is heart, beating so hard against his plastron.

He'd been knocked out, involuntary booted from the game, leaving Donnie on the roof with Tigerclaw, to be snatched up and taken away - away with Karai.

He could hear the tiger's smooth, reverberating voice, confident and cool. "You waste your energy. Energy you will need to do my master's bidding."

The Shredder.

No! Leo screamed.

"No!"

He shot up, broke the surface. Air flooded into his lungs, sharp and cold and real. His eyes blinked rapidly, blinded by the colors and the shadows and the objects that were present and had shapes but were blurry. He couldn't tell where he was, not right away.

"Donnie?" he called out desperately. "Donnie!"

"He is alright Leonardo."

He nearly fell out of bed, whipping around to find the voice, the voice he knew, that was calm and comforting and infuriating all at the same time.

Splinter was sitting in the shadows in the corner of the room, amber eyes gazing upon him strangely, wide, round and relieved, disconnected from the rest of his body which showed no emotion.

So he was home.

He felt a sharp, discomforting pull on his neck and brought his hand up—his hand which finally decided it could move now. His fingers brushed across bandages, large squares of gauze pasted against his face, smothering the burn. His head was still under the mercy of the invisible fist, beating five times as intensely now. He felt slightly nauseous, light-headed. He'd sat up much too fast.

He rolled his eyes around the room as the familiar shape of it began to take form, breathing shallow and loud, sweat breaking out on his forehead. He brushed his hand across his skin and realized he wasn't wearing his mask. He blinked around and found it draped across the corner of the table next to his bed alongside a full glass of water, a hand towel, and a bottle of pills labeled with Donnie's refined scrawl.

"Donnie," he said, turning back to his sensei who was standing now, just a foot or so away from the bed.

Splinter nodded. "Yes, he is alright."

"But," he stuttered. "Tigerclaw…I thought that…"

"Your brothers came to his rescue," Splinter said quietly, picking up the towel and using it to clear the perspiration from Leo's face, gently tilting up his chin with his other hand. "And yours."

Leonardo stared up at his sensei as this news slowly sank into his understanding, piecing together the underlying significance of it.

So he was home—as were all three of his brothers. They were okay, Donnie was okay...

But this was not the outcome that he had prepared himself for.

In his mind, there had been two probable conclusions to his plan that he was willing to accept—one far less than the other. The first was that he and his three brothers return home with Karai. The second was that he and _two_ brothers return home with Karai.

There was the probability of a third outcome yes, but he hadn't wanted it, not even to consider, because it would've put them back_ exactly_ where they had started. At least if the Foot had taken Donnie, they could have remedied that matter quickly - simply because leaving a brother to the Shredder was unacceptable.

He found his head shaking on its own. "Raph and Mikey? But…Karai…"

Splinter said nothing to this, nor did he look at his son anymore. He simply continued to stroke his forehead with the cloth, though Leo was sure he'd wiped away all the sweat by now.

Something hot started squirming in his chest, struggling, growing, bigger and bigger until it was too hot and full to ignore.

Raph and Mikey had not gone for Karai like they were supposed to. They'd saved him and Donnie instead. The mission had failed. _They _had failed…Again.

Leo gritted his teeth. His hands tightened into fists and his eyes narrowed on the empty black wall across the room. "They were supposed to go back for Karai."

"They did what they believed was right," Splinter said. "And I agree with them."

The young terrapin's gut roiled and he tried not to let anything other than discernible words pass his lips. He didn't like how complacently Splinter was still brushing the cloth across his skin.

"We would've been okay," he said in a low growl. "Donnie and I could have figured something out."

"Leonardo…"

He snatched the towel out of his father's hand. "Don't say my name like that," he barked, turning his glare on his sensei.

Splinter gazed down at him with mild concern, his arms now down by is sides but rigid, as though wanting to reach out for his son again, as though desiring to comfort him. This only fueled Leo's anger.

"Don't talk to me like it didn't happen, like I'm your only concern. This is the_ third_ time…Why are you looking at me like that?!"

"Like what?" Splinter said calmly.

"Like you feel sorry for me. Like you're just happy to see my face."

"How should I look at you Leonardo?" Splinter pressed. "You have not been with us for four days."

Leo felt his face drop.

Four days? He'd been floating around in darkness and pain for four days? He swallowed. His throat was still dry. He couldn't meet his father's eyes for a moment.

"I…" His breathing picked up again and he glanced around his room.

Where had Karai been those four days? Still with the Foot? Still a mutant snake? Was she as hurt and lost and confused as him—floating?

This only re-ignited his anger, like striking a flame on a match with one quick swipe.

He punched his mattress between his legs.

"All the more reason for you to be angry with me," he hissed through his teeth.

"Why would I be angry with you?"

He snapped his gaze back up at his father, bewildered. Had Splinter really just said that?

"I_ failed_!" he shouted, drawing out every syllable of that wretched word. "Not the first time, not the second time, the _third_ time Sensei—and after you specifically told me not to leave the lair, not to put my brothers in danger. Donnie could've gotten captured by the Foot."

"But he did not," Splinter said serenely.

"Oh don't_ even_," Leo countered, beak curling with slight contempt. "You're telling me that you're _not _going to give me an hour-long lecture about how it's _never_ acceptable to rush into battle with a wounded teammate? You should be screaming at me right now!"

"I do not understand why I would Leonardo."

A burst of rage sent Leo's arm out to slap the glass cup off of the table by his bed. It flew across the room and hit the floor just short of the wall, streaking water across his room and shattering into a million pieces as it connected with the cement.

"Stop talking to me like that!" he screamed. "You're acting like everything's okay, like I didn't screw everything up_ again_, like I'm not a complete failure!"

"You are not Leonardo—"

"Shut up! That's not true! I know what you really think. You can stand there as long as you want and stare down at me with pity and tell me that it's okay to make mistakes, and it's okay that I'm not perfect, and it's okay that I disobeyed you, because I'm a 'good' leader and you forgive me. I know what you really think. I know that you're disappointed in me. I know that you're angry with me. I know that I'm a terrible son and I never listen and I haven't been able to do anything right since we lost Karai!"

There was an irritating sting to his eyes, tiny pinpricks of unwanted emotion creeping across his vision. He ignored it. He wasn't going to cry. He didn't need to give his father another reason to look down on him.

Splinter set his jaw, his amber eyes sharp now. "You _want_ me to be angry with you. Is that it Leonardo?"

"Yes," Leo said through his teeth. "That's the only thing that makes sense."

Splinter nodded. "You want me to yell at you and waste my time giving you a lecture you've already heard? This is not the first time you've ever disobeyed me. I _expected_ you to do exactly what you did, to go against my orders, and lead your brothers away from here and into battle because you were not patient enough to wait for my blessing.

"I forbade you from going up to the surface until your brother was healed and rested because I wanted it understood that I did not agree that you should attempt to get my daughter back so soon. But I did not for a moment believe that you would give in so easily. You are a determined spirit Leonardo. You cannot cope with failure and so you try again until you get it right. I _expect_ that from you."

Leo bared his teeth. "You're still doing it. You're still coming up with excuses for me."

"I do not make excuses Leonardo. Not for _any_ of my sons," Splinter said, not quite as soft now.

"Then _stop_ pretending like I'm going to get it right some day! And stop acting like everything is going to be okay and like there's this limitless supply of chances, like I can just try again tomorrow!"

"Do you not believe that you can?"

"Of course not!" he roared. "It's been over a _month_ Sensei, I know how this goes. I lead my brothers into battle, come back empty-handed, you rest a hand on my shoulder and look at me like I'm a baby struggling to get on its feet for the first time and you say, 'It's okay Leonardo. Everybody makes mistakes. Mistakes are learning tools. You're still a good leader. You can still maybe not suck so much one day.' And you make me believe that you _actually_ believe in me, but then you go and meditate and hide behind your shoji screens and close your eyes and shut out the world and completely forget that you have four sons _sitting_ out here with no idea what to do to make you happy other than to try, try again, and fail, _fail _again! And every time we come back without your precious daughter you make it sound like it's okay and that you're not mad at us and that you wouldn't rather trade us for her any day because she can probably make you happier than I ever could!"

Something warm and wet was rolling down his cheeks now—multiple somethings actually. They were licking his skin, racing down the length of his face and dropping off of his chin, gushing from the corners of his eyes, blurring his vision and getting in the way of his glaring. He couldn't see his sensei clearly anymore, but that sure as shell wouldn't stop him from shouting.

"So stop treating me like I have something left to give—"

"Stop," Splinter said, low and quiet, eyes staring intensely at the floor.

"Stop what?" Leo snapped, rubbing his un-bandaged cheek. "Stop throwing the truth in your face? Stop letting on that I know how you really think?"

"I said _stop_," Splinter barked, shooting piercing brown eyes at his son. "I will not hate you because you ask me to."

Leo gritted his teeth. "Then you're full of bullshit."

Splinter's eyes flashed and his jaw became taut. "You think because you make a mistake I am going to care for you any less?"

"That's not what _I_ think Master Splinter; it's how _you've_ been acting," Leo challenged.

"Then you have been seriously misguided my son."

"Well _whose_ fault is that?!"

"Mine!" Splinter shouted. "And that is only one of _many_ mistakes I have made with you. Tell me Leonardo, do you care for _me_ any less?"

Leo pressed his lips together and looked away. "That's not the point."

"Then _what _is?"

"I'm not good enough for you."

Splinter's nose wrinkled. "Who said that?"

"You don't have to _say_ it Sensei! I can see it in your eyes _every_ time I come home without Karai."

"Leonardo this is not a competition between you and my daughter! You are both of equal standing to me."

"Then where were you?!" Leo screamed.

The old rat stared with sharp, glinting eyes, but did not respond. He simply stood with a stiff back and his hands clasped tightly behind him.

"_Where_ were you?" his son demanded. "Where were you when I was sitting outside your door waiting for you to help me? Every time I lead my team out to get Karai back, we fail. I don't_ know_ what to do anymore! I don't know and you're not helping me. You've barely even come out to train us anymore. How am I supposed to take that? What_ am_ I supposed to believe other than that I've disappointed you?

"You don't have to lie to me anymore. I don't want you to act like I'm so important to you that you wouldn't want me to risk my life to save your daughter's. I'm not yours! Not like she is; I know that. You don't have to pretend. I'm old enough to understand. Just don't make me believe that I mean that much to you and then turn your back on me!"

He stopped, unable to go on. He was sobbing too hard.

He tried to get it together, tried to catch his breath and continue, but Splinter was shaking his head, still staring at him. And maybe Leo's vision was too blurry and full of tears to see clearly but he thought he saw his father's eyes glossing over too.

"Yame," Splinter said with an oddly uneven voice. "Do not—_ever_ say anything like that again…Leonardo," he snapped.

Leo looked back up at him, furiously rubbing at his eyes, though that wasn't really helping much.

"Do you understand me?" Splinter demanded.

When he did not respond, the old rat sat on the edge of his bed and gripped his shoulders with warm, firm paws. "I would _never_ trade you for _anything_. I love my daughter Leonardo. I want her back just as much as you do, but I would never ask you to sacrifice your life just to make me happy. You and your brothers are my entire existence. You are all that I have. You are my family. It does not matter where you came from. It does not matter that you were not born of my flesh and blood. You are my _son_." Splinter's nose twitched and he lightly shook Leonardo's shoulders. "You are _my_ son."

This time Leo was sure, because he was peering very hard through his tears now. The Great Master Splinter _was_ crying. Fat, silver drops of moisture were pooling out of his round amber eyes and clinging to his fur like morning dew adhering to blades of grass.

"I am sorry," Splinter cried. And when he pulled Leonardo into his embrace, it seemed the old man had no reservations left, he just allowed himself to sob, and Leonardo closed his arms around his father too and gripped the back of his robe in his fingers as though afraid this moment would end, as though afraid his father would change his mind and push him away.

Splinter held his son tightly, one arm wrapped securely around his shell, the other cradling the back of his head, inviting Leonardo to press his face into his shoulder and continue crying with him. He rocked slowly, pressing his damp, furry cheek against the top of the young turtle's head.

"I am sorry that I have been neglecting you my son, that I have made you feel like I do not care for you the way I do my own daughter. I love her Leonardo, but she is not the child I raised. She is not the child I have spent the last sixteen years with. I would do anything for her, but I would do just as much for you and your brothers as well. I…" Splinter hesitated for a moment and then went on with a trembling voice that was so bizarrely unlike him that Leo had no thoughts to think.

"I do not know what I would do without you, my son. I was so afraid that you were not going to wake up, that you were not going to come back to me. I am_ always_ afraid that you are not going to come back to me."

Leo hugged his sensei with stronger arms, burying his burning face further into his shoulder, drawing in the familiar scent of Shoyeido incense and green tea, an aroma he had always gone on the hunt for when he was smaller, if he was afraid or alone or frustrated or sad.

"I love you Leonardo."

Leo grimaced into Splinter's robe and sobbed harder. It took a long while for him to catch enough breath to say, "I love you too Father."

Splinter chuckled softly, stroking the back of Leo's head. He seemed to have already regained control of himself while his son still sniffled into his shoulder. "Do you still wish for me to be angry with you?"

"No," said the turtle's muffled voice as he shook his head.

There was a tiny smile in Splinter's voice when he said, "Then I will not be," and planted a small kiss on Leo's crown.

He wasn't sure how long they sat there holding one another, sniffing and murmuring apologies. And then finally, Splinter loosened his arms around Leo and took his shoulders, breaking apart from him to gingerly wipe the tears from his son's face. Leo helped him, careful to avoid the gauze lining his jaw. He sniffed some more and then sighed, dropping his arms into his lap and looking off to the side.

"How are you feeling?" Splinter asked, quickly pressing a palm against his forehead as though to check his temperature.

Leo shook his head. "Like someone decided to use my head for ninja dodge ball."

The corner of Splinter's mouth just barely lifted. He picked up the bottle of pills and peered at it as though it was something of another world. "Your brother left these for you whenever you were to wake. Painkillers I believe."

"Sensei!"

Splinter and Leonardo both threw their gazes toward Leo's door.

The voice was Raphael's, and something was wrong.


	24. Chapter 24

**I know I made you wait, but it was only partially deliberate. This and the last chapter, I had intended to post together as one, massive, final stretch, but I decided they'd probably work better separately. Chapter 25 will be up shortly, I promise. And then, my dear, sweet readers, that'll be it of this adventure :/**

* * *

"Sensei!"

He nearly tripped, forcing his way through the turnstiles. He tightened his grip on Donatello's wrists and hurried toward the pit with quaking knees. He was afraid he might buckle beneath his abating, younger brother before he got the chance to set him down. It wasn't so much that Donnie was heavy, but that during the half trudge, half scamper back to the lair, Raph had become fully aware of a shower of guilt cascading from the crown of his head to the bottom of his feet, creating a slimy, filth-riddled sensation at having been responsible for making his brother's life a living nightmare for the past few weeks.

If it turned out Donatello was not as strong as he wanted so desperately to convince them, Raphael would have to carry the burden of having been the one to chip away at that strength. If Donnie was weak, it was because of Raph.

The half-conscious turtle on his back mumbled something again.

He had partially come to about halfway to the lair and had been trying to speak ever since, though Raph couldn't understand a word of it. Even when he did catch something he thought might be a cohesive piece of information it turned out not to be the kind of English the red-banded turtle could interpret. It was just Donnie-talk, as though he was assessing his own illness and trying to tell his older brother what was wrong. It wasn't until this that Raph wished he had ever actually listened to Donatello when he tried to educate him and his brothers about common illnesses and infections that they were very prone to catch as humanoid reptiles living in the sewers.

"Hang on Donnie," Raph grunted through his teeth, slowly lowering his brother down on the cushioned bench.

"Raph," Donnie called in a weak voice, eyes fluttering as though trying to find him.

"I'm here," Raph said, kneeling and reaching down to place a hand on his brother's shoulder.

Donnie's skin was either so hot that it came off as cold or so cold that it came off as hot, and so clammy and slick with perspiration that touching him was like dragging a hand along the slime-coated walls of the sewers, only walls didn't tremble quite so fiercely.

"Sensei!" Raph called again, caught between the urgency of bursting into Leo's room to fetch his rat master and wanting to stay by Donnie's side.

But Splinter filled the center of the archway just a second later and swept swiftly toward them once his amber eyes found Donatello shivering on the couch.

"What happened?" he asked with brisk strength, kneeling next to Raphael to reach down and place a hand on Donatello's forehead.

In the lighting of the lair, Donnie looked even paler now, almost grey, and he was practically reflecting the light off of his glistening skin.

Raph opened his mouth to respond but Donnie beat him to it, trying again to verbalize his own medical condition.

"S-s-s-septic…septic sh-shock," he stuttered, eyes just barely open and looking in Splinter's general direction.

"Septic shock?" Raph repeated. "Septic shock, what's that?" he looked desperately to his Sensei who seemed to be fully concentrated on keeping calm.

"H-have an in-n-nfection," Donnie responded. "N-need…n-need…"

"What?" Raph gasped, leaning closer as if by putting his face directly by his brother's, Donnie would magically acquire the ability to speak clearly.

"Antibiotics," Splinter said in an overly-leveled voice. "Which one my son?" he asked, also leaning forward.

"C-c-cephalos…c-cephalosporin. In m-my lab. In the…in the…" A gloss came over Donatello's eyes, powered by frustration and exhaustion, and a lack of flowing oxygen.

Splinter placed a paw on his son's plastron to signal that he didn't need to speak any further. "I understand my son. Save your strength. Concentrate on breathing."

Donnie's jaw rippled and he nodded, two frightened and agonized tears tracking down either side of his face.

"Stay with him," Splinter muttered, quickly glancing at Raphael. "Keep him calm."

"Hai Sensei," Raph croaked, watching as his father stood and hurried toward the lab.

"R-Raph…Raph…"

"Shh," said the older brother, turning back to Donatello to place a hand on his plastron as Splinter had. "It…It's gonna be okay Donnie. You're gonna be okay," he said as certainly as he could.

Donnie nodded, and this gave Raph a little more confidence, though in the moment such a thing seemed backwards. _He_ should have been the one consoling his younger brother, but the truth was he had no idea what "septic shock" entailed and how serious it might be. If Donnie thought he'd be okay, then Raph could think so too.

Donatello weakly lifted a hand and latched onto Raph's arm, sending prickles of sickening shivers through his veins.

"I'm…I'm-m-m…I n-need…"

Raphael stared down at him, wide-eyed, watching his brother's lips, willing the words to come out.

But before Donnie could stutter what it was he needed, a thick blanket was draped over him by un-bandaged green hands. Raph glanced up to see his older brother looking glumly down at Donatello with slightly puffy and reddened eyes. Leo calmly tucked the blanket around Donnie's quivering body and Raphael stared at him with bewildered eyes. He didn't know what to think. He didn't know how to speak.

"L-Leo?" Donnie gasped, thicker tears now rolling down his face, shining with relief.

Leo smiled sadly and reached up to untie that purple mask and use it to gently brush the tears and perspiration from Donnie's face.

"You're awake," Raph choked.

Leo nodded but did not look up at him.

"Did you…Did you…" Donnie stammered.

Leo shook his head, as though he knew what Donnie was trying to ask. "I was just about to, when you and Raph came in. But don't worry about it now."

"But you're…in pain," Donnie spoke breathlessly, brow furrowed with concern. "Are you…ex-experiencing any diz-dizziness?"

Leo chuckled quietly. "Are _you_? Don't worry about me right now Don. You need to get better. Save you strength like Sensei said."

"I'll be…I'll be…okay."

Leo nodded once. "And I believe you. But stop talking." He brushed a hand against the side of Donnie face and the younger turtle obediently quieted himself.

Raph was still staring at Leo, at the bandages covering the right side of his face, at the post-weeping look in his eyes, mixed with both concern and affection as the eldest turtle gazed down at sickly Donatello, never having spared a glance for Raphael.

Raph could feel the obsessive swirls of green filling up his veins, making his fists clench on their own, but he refused to succumb to anger. He was too full of contradicting worry and relief to feel anger—worry for Donnie, relief for Leo. He felt as though he was being pulled in two different directions, wanting to hate Donnie for again absorbing all of Leo's attention, but unable to hate Donnie because there was nothing to hate him for. There was no reason he should feel anything but gratitude and guilt for his younger brother.

So he looked away from Leo, gritting his back teeth, and tugged the blanket up closer to Donnie's chin.

Splinter came back with a vial of clear liquid and a syringe and Raph and Leo, stepped back to allow him room to administer the drug. The two of them watched solemnly and helplessly, parallel to one another, Leo standing in the pit with a hand on the couch to keep him steady as Raph knelt over it.

"Should we let Mikey know Sensei?" Leo said after a moment of silence.

Splinter set the empty vial and syringe now on the step but did not turn around when he answered. "That you are awake yes," he said. "But do not worry him about your brother just yet. I feel he would take it too personally."

Leo, though Splinter was not watching, quickly bowed his head. "Hai Sensei. Does Donnie need anything?"

Splinter sat back with a sigh, eyeing Donatello while the young terrapin's trembling softened and his eyes closed, head dropping slowly to the side as he succumbed once again to oblivion.

"I am afraid there is not much we will be able to do for him other than give him regular doses of antibiotics and a lot of fluids. He must rest."

"But he _will_ be okay, won't he?" Raph asked with a churning stomach.

Splinter hesitated and then nodded faintly. "Yes," he said slowly. "I believe so…Septic shock, Raphael, means that his blood has been infected, no doubt from the sewage that succeeded to get into his earlier wound. Normally, it is very severe, but our mutagenic blood gives us the ability to heal faster and more efficiently than humans. He will be fine, but he will be very sick for a while. He will not be able to train or go up to the surface probably for several weeks and he will need much rest, which I fear he will not be entirely happy about."

Raph heard Leo exhale heavily and glanced over to see his shoulders dropping as though they had been tensed up to his neck this whole time. Raph too had to admit that Splinter's words slightly loosened the knot in his stomach, though this only gave way for more pressing guilt.

"Should we move him?" Leo asked.

"Later," Splinter said, standing. "We must give the medicine a chance to take effect. Let him sleep in the meantime."

Both Raph and Leo nodded and watched as their father picked up the discarded instruments and drifted toward the lab to put them away.

Once he was gone, Raph could feel a heaviness of silence and urgency to the air; it crowded him, tingling his skin with ripples of goose bumps and poking him in the chest, urging him to speak. Leo was standing just right there, still staring down at Donatello, either waiting for Raphael to open his mouth or deliberately ignoring his presence; Raph couldn't tell which.

However, once the red-banded turtle looked toward his brother and opened his mouth, Leonardo turned stiffly and made his way toward Mikey's room as though suddenly and mutely changing his mind.

Raphael's stomach dropped and he could feel himself grimacing.

Leo was angry with him. He knew it; he could feel the cold still tugging on his skin, could practically see the trail of ice left in his brother's wake.

Leo was most _definitely_ angry with him. And he had every right to be of course, though Raph doubted even Leonardo himself knew why. He figured his older brother's contempt had rolled over from the mission and its failure. Raph had been in charge of Mikey and they'd had one job to do, but instead of collecting Karai, they had saved their brothers instead. It almost made _Raph_ angry that Leo would be cold about this now, considering what might've happened to them if Raph and Mikey had allowed them to be captured by Tigerclaw and the Foot. And with Donatello being sick, there was no way Leo couldn't be at least a _little_ grateful that the two of them weren't chained up in Shredder's lair right now.

But staring at those bandages lining his face as Leo disappeared through the archway leading to the bedrooms, Raph could not stay mad. Leo had every right to be angry with him. He just wasn't angry for the right reason.


	25. Chapter 25

**A couple months later and here it is: the end. I had no idea this piece would take the turns it did, but sometimes a story will just write itself. I think I'm pretty satisfied with the ending (I mean, I'm posting it so...). Of course, it is most important that _you_ are satisfied. So, as always, let me know what you think.**

**Also, thank you guys so much for the reviews you've already done. You're all so awesome and encouraging and it truly is because of you that we got to the end of this at all. So thank you, thank you, thank you! And thank you too for sticking with me. You're amazing readers.**

**With that said, read on...**

* * *

Raphael avoided entering Donnie's room for days.

Instead, he paced before the opened doorway, skimming the walls with his fingertips and pausing occasionally with his toes at the edge of the threshold, never daring to take a step across.

He watched Mikey pass in and out of the room, hauling in heavy pots of soup and noodles and balancing plates full of Donnie's favorite pizza. However, it turned out Donnie didn't have much of an appetite and Mikey usually departed the room still with half of his offering, most likely having been the one to polish off the majority of it himself, but Raph had heard Donatello weakly assuring his younger brother that he was grateful and what little bit he did eat was helping.

Raphael knew this was Donnie's way of trying to make Mikey feel better.

Upon learning how ill their brother had gotten, the little orange-banded turtle had knelt by Donnie's bed in tears for three solid hours, wailing out snot-coated apologies as Donnie half-consciously patted him on the head and mumbled again and again that he'd be okay and he didn't blame Mikey.

Once Michelangelo finally came to believe this, he eventually brightened up and began spending the majority of his time eating Donnie's food as he sat on the end of Donnie's bed, playing video games on his T-phone while Donatello drifted in and out of sleep.

Splinter also often took up space in Donnie's room, mostly to parent over him with medication, ice to keep his temperature down, blankets to stifle his shivering, and California poppy tea to help him sleep.

He often spoke to Donatello quietly in Japanese—something that the two of them were accustomed to, seeing as Donatello had been the first to pick up the language. Raph understood it for the most part, though there were occasional words or phrases he couldn't quite catch, mostly because they spoke so fluently. But the gist of it was simply Splinter asking how Donnie felt, questioning him about his medical status, and insisting time and again that he get as much rest as possible. After that he'd leave the room quickly, telling Michelangelo that if he _must _hang over Donnie's bed, he needed to keep his games on silent.

Leo visited Donnie too, and unlike Mikey and Splinter, he never even passed a glance over Raphael who by that point was usually leaning against the wall next to Donnie's door, intensely focused on balancing his sai on the tip of his finger to give his eyes something else to look at, because Leo worked like a clock and showed up at Donnie's door at predictably regular intervals throughout the day.

His visits were shorter than Mikey's but longer than Splinter's and Raph would allow himself a total of three glances through the opened doorway once Leo was inside and he could resume his pacing. And each time, he would see Leo sitting on the same edge of Donatello's bed either speaking breezily with Donnie and Mikey while Donatello was awake or making sure he was comfortable while he slept, unnecessarily un-tucking and re-tucking Donnie's blankets and reiterating Splinter's plea that Michelangelo remain as quiet as possible.

There was the occasional moment, normally in the middle of the night, that Raphael guarded Donatello alone. And in those moments, while watching his younger brother sleep, he could fool himself for a second into thinking he was nothing but grateful for Donatello and his heroic determination to cure the world of its ailments while putting his own to the side. But every time Leo entered that room and sat on the edge of that bed, ignoring Raph's presence and exchanging small smiles with their gap-toothed brother, Raph knew gratitude was not what he felt.

He was jealous, yes. He couldn't deny that anymore—as much as he wanted to. Guilt would not allow him. Maybe it had faded to a low simmer, but it hadn't gone away. And it was in those moments when Leo came around that the little green monster in his chest broadcasted its existence most obnoxiously.

But he tightened his muscles and clenched his teeth and remained silent because he knew he couldn't say anything. He knew he had no right. And he was truthfully sickened by his own lack of compassion.

As much as he wished Donnie would disappear, he was also sorry—_extremely_ sorry—simply because he had those thoughts at all. He wouldn't_ allow _Donnie to disappear. And yet, he couldn't find it in him to open his mouth to either his leader or his competition.

It became easily overwhelming. And once there came a day that Leo was exiting Donatello's room after Donnie had fallen asleep, and at the doorway he paused for a millisecond and gave Raph a glance—just a glance—before walking off to spend the rest of his day probably meditating and/or training with Splinter one on one. But that was one glance that spoke all the words ever needed to be spoken for Raphael to know with a gut-wrenching sickness that he could no longer wade in the shadows by his brother's room and expect to be forgiven.

He was guilty, and by standing around in somber silence, he had allowed that guilt to fester, to grow beneath his skin like a tumor. And with that one glance from those cold blue eyes, he suddenly felt the full force of that guilt, that filth, his _own_ illness, like Leo had it written it out on his palm and then shoved his hand in Raph's face.

And so for the first time in days, Raphael found himself sliding one foot across the threshold of Donnie's room and then the other, until he was inside and crossing the floor to Donnie's bedside, driven by nauseating shame and the slightest fear of waking his younger brother.

He scrounged around for a piece of paper and something to write with and, in his best chicken-scratch, wrote the words _I'm sorry_.

He placed the note just under the genius's pillow, leaving one wrinkled corner poking out, and quickly left the room.

It was early afternoon. Mikey was in the kitchen making lunch. Leo had already slipped into the dojo to join Splinter.

No one saw Raph leave.

He hopped down onto the abandoned subway tracks, dragging his hand along the side of the Shellraiser as he passed, and slowly ventured through the network of tunnels that had become so familiar to him over the past sixteen years of his life that he hardly needed to glance up to know where he was going.

And he was back under the grate before he realized any time had passed.

He sat against the wall the way Donnie had a few days before, knees drawn up to his plastron, arms wrapped around his legs. He rested his chin on his knee pads and stared gloomily through the halo of white, summer light at the opposite wall, listening to the mundane chaos of the city above: growling engines and blaring horns, temperamental taxi drivers and strolling pedestrians—always on the move, always going somewhere, never needing to hide themselves in the underbelly of the city, never bothered by robot ninjas and mutant tigers, Japanese snake-girls, and inadequate medical availability. Though, they quite possibly understood jealousy.

Maybe some human somewhere had three brothers, and maybe everything was a competition for him. Maybe he had a confused, unspoken affection for his older brother, and maybe that brother hated him. Maybe the older brother preferred the company of another brother, a better brother, one that was nicer and smarter and gentler and could better understand. And maybe the human was jealous too even though he knew the gentle, understanding brother just wanted to fix things.

Raph hoped, for the sake of those brothers, that this was their only problem, that the gentler brother wasn't sick and the older brother wasn't badly scarred, that the jealous brother had enough sense not to lose his temper and throw rocks, and that the youngest brother stayed happy. They'd need it.

"Thought this was where you were off to."

Raph jumped, one hand jerking back for his sai before his eyes landed on Leonardo coming up from the shadows. The blue-banded turtle held out a hand as though this would dissolve Raphael's sudden fight-or-flight response and keep him in his seat…And it did.

Raphael watched as Leo stepped into the square of light and lowered himself down next to him, sighing as he sat and squinted toward the opposite wall.

He was still a little weak from their defeat, muscles visibly coiling and releasing whenever he moved, out of breath if he was in motion too fast or too long. But for the most part, he was healing well. There was no wobble in his knees, no limp to his walk, and he'd quite obviously blended back into the art of silence. The only thing was the scars on the right side of his face, which Raphael now could not see from where he sat. But he didn't need to, to feel their existence. He knew what they looked like, and they gave him shudders of discomfort every time he saw them. They were still healing and Leo was still taking pills to ward off the pain, but the gauze had been removed and now the stitches and remnants of encrusted blood were visible to their entire underground reality, taking their dear sweet time to heal. They never would completely, Donnie had said the day after that night. There would always be scars—to eternally remind Raphael of his malignant potential.

Even not facing them now, Raph couldn't look at his older brother without feeling the squirm of live worms wiggling around in the lining of his stomach. So he returned to staring at the wall too, hands back around his knees, but his back straight now, shoulders slightly rigid.

There was a long silence between them, a confusing, unreadable silence that hung there like an almost transparent sheet of silk between them as they stared across at absolutely nothing.

Leo was there. If Raph wanted to, he could break that barrier and it would take no effort at all, but it was a barrier nonetheless.

As it was, Leo was braver and therefore, the one to break it first.

"I saw your note," he said quietly. "The one you left Donnie."

There was another pause as Raph considered this but said nothing, feeling slightly vulnerable next to his older brother. But the silence didn't last as long this time before Leo turned his head to fully look at Raphael with those blue eyes of his.

"It was you wasn't it?" he asked, voice unemotional.

He was always good at that—leaving his personal emotions out of the equation if he wanted answers, making anyone he talked to believe for a moment that he had no real opinion on the issue; however, in the face of his brothers, that trick often wore out and sometimes Leo became the easiest person to read.

Raph's heart beat a rough cadence. He didn't know he had expected this until it happened, but all he could do was look at his brother.

He said nothing.

Leonardo's expression did not change. "It happened and it's over," he said with a miniscule shrug. "All I want to know is why Raph."

Raphael grimaced and looked away again. "I…" he looked down at his knees. "I can't tell you."

He didn't glance over to watch his brother's blank expression turn into something of resentment, but even if he had, Leo would not have allowed him to see, for he had turned away, sitting now with his shell to the guilty terrapin, huddled over his own knees. Raph knew Leo was angry; he could feel the cold seeping from his brother's carapace, and it drove ripples of chills up his arms.

"That's not fair," Leo said, quietly but frigidly. "I'm willing to forgive you Raph—for _everything_. For treating Donnie the way you did, for turning on us, for nearly getting us killed and taking your time to apologize for it...All I need is an answer."

Raph swallowed dryly. He opened his mouth to respond, but when nothing came out he realized he was about to receive his due and decided not to fight this time. He buried his face up to his nose in his arms and stared hard at the opposite wall, saying nothing, all the while absorbing the frost emitting from his blue-banded brother that hovered like a silver mist throughout the tunnel.

Leo got roughly to his feet and Raph watched through his peripheral vision as his leader turned and glared down at him with curled fists.

Leo kicked him in the bridge of his shell, but with weak force, as though he were attempting to wake him up from a deep sleep.

"Raph," he called sternly, using that authoritative voice of his, demanding an answer.

When he got none, he crouched down and shoved his weight against him, trying to push him over without pushing him over, was though he was attempting to tip a cow. Raphael tightened his muscles and didn't budge, nor did he take his eyes away from the opposite wall.

"Raph!" Leo called out, a desperate tone to his voice. He straightened up again, backing away a couple of steps as though to assess what should be done about this stubborn, immovable boulder sitting in the middle of the tunnel.

Leo's muscles shivered. "You want to make this about you? Fine."

He scooped his hand through the small stream of sewage cutting across the floor and splashed a palm-full of water into Raph's face.

Raphael blinked and rubbed his face against his wristbands.

"How would you like it if_ I_ threw rocks at _you_?" Leo said, tossing a marble-sized bit of debris at Raph's shell. "How would you like it if I gambled _your_ life, if I handed _you_ over to Tigerclaw—or the Shredder? How would you like it if I single-handedly ruined your chances of obtaining the _one_ thing you've been after for months? Answer me Raph!"

Raphael said nothing. He just sat there, curled around himself while his older brother kicked at him and pushed at him and showered him with trash and sewage, like a five-year-old throwing a fit, trying to get this unyielding object to move, to fight back. But Raphael wouldn't do that. He had no right.

And finally Leo tired and plopped down in front of him, jaw tight and eyes shining, brow creased in a grimace. He heaved a dry sob and threw his face onto Raph's folded arms, hugging himself and leaning his knees on either side of his brother's.

Raphael lifted his head and stared at him, a little bewildered that, for a moment, he felt older and more in control than Leonardo, that for a moment Leo looked like Mikey nestled up against him, seeking comfort from the very thing that hurt him.

"You hate me don't you?" Leo mumbled rhetorically.

Raph's stomach turned. "_Hate _you?"

Leo lifted his head and met his gaze with troubled blue eyes.

"You think I _hate you_?"

"Well if you don't then what is it?...Donnie?"

Raph glanced away and pressed his lips together.

"It _is_ Donnie?" Leo exclaimed, as though he hadn't truly thought it. "What…_Why_ do you hate Donnie, Raph?"

"I don't hate him," Raph said indignantly. "He's my brother," he added in a feeble rush.

Leo's eyes tightened. "Give me proof that you don't hate Donnie, Raph, and then I'll believe you."

When Raphael said nothing, Leo sighed with a roll of his eyes and began to stand.

"No!" Raph shot out a hand to grab his brother's wrist.

He didn't know why. He had nothing to say. He hadn't prepared an apology speech of absolute grandeur, despite all the time he'd been given to fabricate one. He didn't want to continue sitting there as Leonardo's icy anger enveloped him. But…he didn't want to be left alone to sit in the sewage and absorb shadows anymore either.

Leo looked down at him, eyes like polar caps. "What?"

Raph swallowed.

Leonardo's jaw fluttered and he faced his brother squarely, looming over him. "What is it Raph?"

"I don't hate Donnie."

The corner of Leo's mouth tightened. "You said that."

Raph gritted his teeth. "I'm sorry alright?"

"Thanks," the older turtle said flatly. "But I'm not interested."

It wasn't until then that the red-banded turtle felt the familiar burn of a fire in his gut. "What do you want me to do Leo?" he snapped, getting to his feet.

"I already told you," Leo countered. "I want an answer. A _real_ answer. If you don't hate me and you don't hate Donnie, then what the hell is wrong with you Raphael? Why would you do that to us? Why would you put us in danger like that?"

"I didn't mean to!"

Leo's beak curled. "I'll believe that as soon as you prove it…_Why _is this so hard for you?"

"Because…" Raph sucked in a breath and dropped his gaze. "You don't get it," he grumbled.

"How _can_ I?!" Leo exclaimed, yanking his arm free. "You haven't _said_ anything. What do you want _me_ to do Raph? I'm trying to make this easy for you. I'm trying not to be angry with you and resent you, but you haven't given me a _reason_ not to. Instead, you've done your absolute best to make sure we all hate you for the rest of our lives. You can't push us around and throw rocks at our heads and toss us to the enemy and then expect us to understand why you did it and feel sorry for you when you haven't explained yourself. Don't you get that?"

Raph grimaced and looked back at his brother who neither flinched nor softened.

"So I'm going to give you_ one_ more chance to start explaining yourself, and if you give me bullshit then we're done," Leo said, almost in a tired kind of way, cutting his hand through the gap between them to demonstrate. "And I mean for good Raph. I'm not going to put up with you anymore."

Leo's eyes were shining, half with hurt and half with desperation. He might've spoken with a tone of severe finality, but he was pleading, _begging _Raphael to save whatever little flimsy bit of a relationship they had left. He didn't _want_ to put an end to it, but he would, and Raph believed him. And he was scared.

"Okay, alright," he snapped, fists curling as his arms shook, though he wasn't sure what with. Fear? Anger? Anxiety?

"I…" He swallowed and looked away, trying not to notice the hollow beat in his chest or the sting that had suddenly jumped to his eyes.

He exhaled in frustration and opened his mouth. "I didn't want you to get hurt. I was aiming at Donnie. I didn't _want _to hurt him either, but I wanted…I just didn't want him there. Alright? I was sick of him. I was sick of him and how perfect and good he is and how effortlessly you always fall for it. I'm not as smart as him. I'm not as gentle and patient as him. And I hate that, okay? I hate that. Because he knows how to understand you and make you laugh and cheer you up, and I don't. I've been trying to help you through missing Karai and all that, but all I've been doing is making things worse, because that's all I'm good for, just…causing problems."

He had to pause for a moment because he'd heard his voice and it was not the same Raphael resonance that he was used to. It was not steady. It was not strong. It was not hot-tempered or rude or domineering. It was the very opposite.

"And I…" He tried to keep his gaze averted, but it wasn't working. His eyes were naturally attracted to that blue banded brother of his and when his saw Leo's face he felt everything inside him fall to pieces.

"I was jealous," he confessed. "I_ am_ jealous. And I'm scared. I don't want to lose you, Leo. Not to Tigerclaw or Karai or even Donnie. I just can't…And he…And you…"

His breath was stuck in his chest, building pressure behind his plastron, making his teeth grind and his cheeks puff up. He thought it was more anger for a moment, and so he allowed it to unfold, just as he'd always done. And he threw out a fist and punched his brother in the arm, and when Leo neither stopped him nor blinked, he realized it _wasn't_ anger and the tears finally fell from his eyes.

He grimaced, hating himself for it, but it wouldn't stop and he was too spent to make it. So he allowed this unfamiliar sensation to consume him and stepped forward to drop his forehead onto his brother's shoulder, curling his arms around Leo's shell and sobbing quietly into his skin.

"I love you," he whispered.

His voice was quiet and muffled by Leo's shoulder, but he had no doubts that his older brother heard and knew that he didn't mean it the way he normally meant it—if he'd ever mentioned anything like it before. He didn't know _how_ it was different, but it was different, and they both understood that.

Though Leonardo said nothing in return, Raphael felt the secure strength of his brother's arms slowly closing around him and was very aware when Leo turned his head and placed a gentle kiss on his temple.

A soft breeze drifted through the grate and rippled the tails of their masks, brushing the red and blue strips of battered cloth against the skin of their opposite. Car horns continued to blare and New Yorkers persisted to shout and jabber and be always on the move.

And below their feet stood two young brothers who had yet to fully understand one another but shared a spoken affection that lived in their embrace.

* * *

**"And wrap that up and give it to a child on Christmas, cuz we're done." (Megamind)... *sigh* I am such a nerd :)**


	26. To Answer Your Questions

**Okay.**

**Your reactions are great, first of all. Thanks for reading to the end!**

**I know I didn't put a nice shiny red bow on this thing, and I left you with some loose ends. This was my intention. **

**But I will answer some of your questions. **

**The first being that Leo and Raph's relationship is entirely up to you. I myself, from the very beginning, wasn't sure where I wanted it to go, but this was where it ended up. I didn't know what Leo's reaction would be and I still don't. However, yes, I have been contemplating a sequel...In fact, if you're looking for one it is now officially posted! So check it out if you like, it's called Outspoken. And I apologize in advance about the summary - I got a little lazy and didn't feel like thinking up anything better, but I figure if you read this one you have a basic idea of what it's going to be about *cough cough* a little T-Cest warning (maybe, not telling). But anywho, take a look at it!  
**

**I hope this helps. You guys crack me up; thanks for being awesome :)**


End file.
